Shorting XRP, Bitcoin, Ether, SOL Has This NEAR Trader up $20 Million

The Position, Line by Line

The trade was first flagged by onchain analysts, who noted that the trader’s $NEAR long had crossed $20 million in floating profit after the token climbed more than 145% in a month. The account’s public Hyperliquid positions fill in the blanks and here is what the book looked like as of earlier today:

• $NEAR long: 5,756,507 $NEAR at an average entry of $2.353, worth about $34.1 million.
• Unrealized profit on $NEAR: About $20.55 million, a return on margin of more than 1,500%.
• Leverage: 10x on a cross-margin account valued at roughly $7.97 million.
• Estimated liquidation price on $NEAR: About $1.33.
• Short book: Seven coins at roughly $1.9 million to $2.3 million each.

$NEAR is changing hands around $5.82 today, up about 12% on the day. In early September, the same token traded near $2.30.

Why Did $NEAR Make a Run?

The timing of the entry matters more than size since the trader was in before $NEAR’s biggest catalysts landed. The Bitwise NRR fund, described as the first U.S. spot $NEAR exchange-traded fund (ETF), launched on Sept. 29 and pulled in nearly $58 million during its first week. For a token that once required an exchange account to own, that is a new door for brokerage money.

Usage has been climbing alongside price and $NEAR Intents, the network’s cross-chain swap layer, logged $1.84 billion through the course of September. Cumulative Intents volume is now estimated at $31 billion to $33 billion across more than 30 chains.

Lastly, in terms of supply, a governance change in late 2025 cut $NEAR’s maximum annual inflation from about 5% to roughly 2.5%, and a newer proposal would lower issuance again toward 1.6% over two years. Fewer new tokens and fresh ETF demand is the kind of mix leveraged traders hunt for.

Also, when bitcoin pushed toward $84,000 on Sunday, roughly $7.18 million in $NEAR positions were liquidated, most of them shorts, per a liquidation heatmap shared by Kook Capital.

The Hedge Nobody Mentions

Alongside the $NEAR long, the wallet runs shorts of about $2 million each on BTC, ETH, $SOL, BNB, XRP, $ADA and $AVAX. That adds up to roughly $14.7 million of bets against the large-cap market.

Those shorts are mostly underwater, with the $AVAX short alone showing a loss of about $623,000, $ADA roughly $327,000 and $SOL about $207,000. The bitcoin short was opened at an average of $79,550, so every move in bitcoin’s price toward $84,000 has cost the account money.

In total, the short side is down about $1.33 million, a small fraction of the $NEAR gain.

It is a different style from the all-in directional whales Hyperliquid is known for, as Bitcoin.com News recently tracked an ether whale liquidated for $69 million who reloaded 30 minutes later, and a $32 million bitcoin short betting on the anniversary of last year’s crash.

What Breaks the Trade?

$NEAR would need to fall about 77% from current levels to hit the estimated $1.33 liquidation mark. Still, 10x leverage on a $34 million position means a 10% $NEAR pullback would erase about $3.4 million of the gain in a single move.

Analysts have also warned that $NEAR’s relative strength index has at times pushed above 70 to 80, a zone that often signals overbought conditions. However, historically speaking, ETF flows can reverse as quickly as they arrive.