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Points of Focus
- Pension-usdt.eth lost $23.9M after its 50,000 ETH short was liquidated on Hyperliquid.
- The forced unwind took 12 seconds after the trader had recorded 23 consecutive wins.
- Crypto shorts suffered $2.74B in liquidations over 24 hours as ETH jumped 18%.
A trader with roughly $49 million in profits from bearish crypto bets saw nearly half of those gains erased in 12 seconds. The wallet, pension-usdt.eth, lost $23.9 million after its 50,000 ETH short was liquidated as Ether surged during Thursday’s market-wide short squeeze, according to Lookonchain.
The loss broke a run that had included 23 consecutive winning trades. One earlier 60,000 ETH short generated about $5.8 million, helping lift the wallet’s reported cumulative profits above $40 million before the latest liquidation.
Smart trader pension-usdt.eth, who once made $49M and had a 23-win streak, has been liquidated!
His entire 50,000 $ETH ($106M) short was fully liquidated, resulting in a $23.9M loss.https://t.co/kca0oSGOnW pic.twitter.com/AEogLFLJ6y
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) August 20, 2026
50,000 ETH short disappears in 12 seconds
Hyperliquid records show the position being forced out within seconds. The liquidation began at 04:51:03 and ended at 04:51:15, splitting the 50,000 ETH position across five forced executions rather than closing it at a single price.
The first 9,989 ETH changed hands near $2,193, followed by 20,698 ETH around $2,209 and another 15,830 ETH near $2,214. A later 1,871 ETH tranche executed around $2,236. Hyperliquid’s backstop absorbed the remaining 1,417 ETH after market orders failed to clear the full position. Ether gained $43 during the liquidation window.
The execution sequence helps explain the size of the $23.9 million loss. The trader was not exiting at one market price. Each forced closure occurred as ETH moved higher, making the remaining short exposure progressively more expensive to close.
Ethereum (ETH) rally catches a market crowded with shorts
The wallet was one casualty in a much broader wave of forced closures. Crypto short liquidations reached $2.74 billion over 24 hours, while total liquidations approached $3 billion across 172,108 traders. Ether shorts accounted for about $1.13 billion, according to CoinGlass.
The squeeze followed the US Treasury’s Aug. 19 decision to double planned buybacks of 10- to 30-year debt to at least $4 billion per operation. Reuters reported that the 30-year Treasury yield fell to about 5.18% after reaching 5.34%, its highest level since 2007.
The Treasury action was one part of the market backdrop rather than a complete explanation for the crypto rally. Forced short covering added buying pressure as leveraged positions were closed across exchanges, with reported ETH shorts accounting for about $1.13 billion in losses over 24 hours.
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