100,000 BTC Hyperliquid Whale Allegedly Linked to Former BitForex CEO in Fraud Scandal – “The fund isn’t mine”

On-chain investigator EyeOnChain has allegedly identified the mysterious Hyperliquid whale controlling over 100,000 BTC as Garrett Jin, former CEO of collapsed exchange BitForex, which conducted a suspected $56.5 million exit scam in February 2024.

The investigation traced the whale’s wallet addresses back to Jin through ENS domains ereignis.eth and garrettjin.eth, connecting funds withdrawn from exchanges like HTX and Binance seven to eight years ago to his tenure at Huobi and the BitForex collapse.

1/ An investigation into the alleged identity of the mysterious Hyperliquid/Hyperunit whale, who holds over 100,000 BTC. Recently, he sold over $4.23B in BTC to acquire ETH and is the same person behind the $735M BTC short order placed on the same platform. pic.twitter.com/WeNvmiYP8v

— Eye (@eyeonchains) October 11, 2025

Former Exchange CEO Denies Ownership as CZ Questions Validity

Jin, who graduated from Boston University in 2008 with a degree in economics, served as the CEO of BitForex from 2017 to 2020, before the exchange was accused of falsifying trading volumes and operating without registration in Japan.

BitForex froze withdrawals in February 2024 after approximately $57 million was withdrawn from hot wallets without explanation, with CEO Jason Luo resigning just days before the platform became inaccessible.

Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission issued fraud warnings as users lost access to their assets.

The whale recently sold over $4.23 billion in BTC to acquire ETH and opened a $735 million BTC short position on Hyperliquid, timing the trade just before President Trump’s tariff announcement that crashed markets.

Jin responded to the allegations by stating, “The fund isn’t mine — it’s my clients‘” and claiming he runs nodes providing in-house insights.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao shared EyeOnChain’s investigation thread, adding, “not sure of validity, hope someone can cross check.”

Hi @cz_binance, thanks for sharing my personal and private information. To clarify, I have no connection with the Trump family or @DonaldJTrumpJr — this isn’t insider trading.

— Garrett (@GarrettBullish) October 13, 2025

EyeOnChain’s investigation revealed that Jin currently holds 46,295 BTC, valued at approximately $5.19 billion, across eight wallet addresses.

During August and September, he sold over 35,000 BTC for ETH using both spot and perpetual contracts via Hyperliquid, employing a series of BTC wallets that received over 570,000 ETH, which were subsequently deposited into Ethereum’s Beacon Deposit Contract for staking through his company, XHash.

Trail of Evidence Links Wallets to BitForex Collapse

The investigation identified that an ETH staking contract deployed by Jin’s linked address was initially funded by ereignis.eth on Binance Smart Chain.

The very first wallet to interact with the staking contract was ereignis.eth, which deposited 32 ETH.

Analysis of the wallet that opened the $735 million BTC short position revealed that it received funds for fees from an address that had deposited $4.1 million in USDC to a Binance deposit address shortly before.

The same Binance deposit address had received $7.54 million from another wallet that sent $40,000 in USDT to ereignis.eth exactly two weeks before the massive short position was opened.

The ENS name ereignis.eth, meaning “event” in German, has a second ENS name, garrettjin.eth, which directly leads to Jin’s X account.

Following EyeOnChain’s thread, Jin removed XHash from his profile bio and changed his profile picture, though he maintained the information on Telegram.

BREAKING: Garrett Jin , the Hyperliquid/Hyperunit whale changed his Telegram privacy settings right after my post, hiding his previously public photos and phone number. He also removed @XHash_com from his bio, just like he did on his X profile after @emmettgallic posted about… https://t.co/GnikBkwnZn pic.twitter.com/9VM4zh7PNP

— Eye (@eyeonchains) October 12, 2025

Jin founded XHash in 2024 as an institutional platform for non-custodial ETH staking, with EyeOnChain suggesting all staked ETH could have been used to onboard questionable funds from the BitForex collapse.

Between 2020 and 2023, Jin operated WaveLabs VC, launching projects including TanglePay and IotaBee, which shut down in 2024, and GroupFi, which remains active after receiving seed funding.

BitForex Exit Scam Left Users With $57M in Losses

BitForex announced peak trading volumes of over $4.2 billion in January 2024 before the suspected exit scam began with large outflows from hot wallets totaling $56.5 million across Ethereum, Tron, Bitcoin, and stablecoins.

The wallet drains appeared controlled rather than hacked, which suggests internal complicity.

CEO Jason Luo resigned on January 31, 2024, with the first suspicious wallet transaction occurring on February 21 and the platform fully closing on February 23.

Following the shutdown, BitForex’s communication channels went silent, user complaints on platforms like Telegram were deleted, and community managers became inactive or changed identities.

In July 2024, BitForex announced that its team had been detained and was under investigation by the police in Jiangsu Province, China.

The exchange promised to reopen for KYC-based withdrawals but kept trading and deposits suspended before shutting down entirely.

The allegations come as Hyperliquid is frontrunning criticism of the industry regarding its lack of transparency.

💥@cz_binance pushed back after Hyperliquid’s Jeff Yan @chameleon_jeff accused centralized exchanges like Binance of underreporting user liquidations during last week’s market chaos.#ChangpengZhao #Hyperliquid https://t.co/oHnrmm4g26

— Cryptonews.com (@cryptonews) October 13, 2025

Platform co-founder Jeff Yan accused centralized exchanges like Binance of underreporting user liquidations during last week’s market crash, claiming that some CEXs could be underreporting by as much as 100 times during liquidation bursts.

Zhao responded indirectly, stating Binance and BNB Chain ecosystem players “took hundreds of millions out of their own pockets to protect users” while others “tried to ignore, hide, shift blame, or attack competitors.”