Market-making firm Wintermute has significantly increased its bearish exposure on Hyperliquid and $XRP among its largest short positions, according to on-chain data tracked by Onchain Lens.
The firm’s total short exposure has experienced a very sharp increase. Its top five short positions include Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana, Hyperliquid’s native HYPE token and $XRP.
Wintermute’s $XRP short is currently valued at more than $10 million.
Onchain Lens reported that Wintermute had increased its overall short exposure by roughly $45 million since its previous update.
Notably, Wintermute’s tracked positions were sitting at a combined unrealized loss
$XRP's tumultuous week
$XRP is up 49.24% over seven days while open interest stands at $3.61 billion. There is a very large amount of leveraged positioning.
Binance's general account long/short ratio is 2.5651, while OKX is at 2.08. Binance's top-trader ratios are even higher: 2.8081 based on accounts and 2.2136 based on positions. In short, derivatives positioning shown here is decisively leaning toward longs (in sharp contrast to Wintermute).
The $XRP short is large in absolute terms, but it is relatively small compared with the $3.61 billion total $XRP open interest. It accounts for only about 0.28% of total OI.
However, it is worth noting that $XRP has so far failed to sustain its momentum like during its previous rallies.
Over the past 24 hours, $21.42 million of $XRP positions were liquidated, with $12.47 million coming from longs versus $8.95 million from shorts. So longs have actually suffered more now that the cryptocurrency's momentum is waning.
If $XRP continues rising, Wintermute's position could become part of the squeeze mechanism. But if $XRP loses momentum, the crowded longs could make potential downside more painful.