Over the past month or two, the Meme market has been booming, with many Meme coins on-chain reaching market caps of over $100 million, as if everyone on board is immersed in the joy of a Meme bull market. But one stubborn whale insists on going against the trend, shorting this round's popular Meme coins despite the pressure.
This whale is loracle, the undisputed No.1 short seller of Meme coins in this cycle.
According to on-chain data, loracle currently holds a 3x leveraged PONS short position on Hyperliquid, with 27.75 million PONS tokens, a position value exceeding $16.5 million, and an average entry price of $0.665. Due to the recent collective pullback in Meme coins, as of press time, the unrealized profit is approximately $1 million. Meanwhile, loracle is also the No.1 short seller of CASHCAT, holding a 3x leveraged CASHCAT short position with 36.3 million CASHCAT tokens, a position value exceeding $6.2 million, and an average entry price of $0.2. As of press time, the unrealized profit is approximately $1.3 million.
When PONS reached its all-time high, loracle's PONS short position had a peak unrealized loss exceeding $6.9 million. Overseas KOL MLM once wanted to form a team to "hunt" loracle, posting on X platform that they had raised eight figures in capital, but have yet to take action. loracle seems not at all nervous about his positions being public, and he even publicly called out to Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, hoping he would coordinate market makers to add liquidity to the PONS/USDG market.
While loracle is currently profitable on his Meme shorts, a tally of all his on-chain positions and Hyperliquid historical P&L reveals that loracle is still at a total loss of approximately $25 million. loracle's main on-chain trading addresses:
1. 0xefe4c06b6d310978bead596e1798a4fc1d9d194b
2. 0x8def9f50456c6c4e37fa5d3d57f108ed23992dae
The famous infinite-ammo, contract degen "Machi Big Brother" has so far racked up total losses of about $30 million on Hyperliquid, while loracle's peak unrealized loss (about $70 million) even surpassed Machi's. Machi and loracle are two sides of the same coin—one loves going long, the other loves going short—but what they have in common is that both seem to have infinite ammo.
So, what exactly is loracle's background, and where does his money come from? Odaily Planet Daily will dig into this whale's trading history and past in this article.
Both an early Hyperliquid contributor and HYPE's biggest short
loracle is an early contributor to the Hyperliquid ecosystem. In 2024, he founded hypurr.fun, a Telegram-based Hyperliquid ecosystem launchpad that generated considerable wealth effects at the time.
After hypurr.fun collapsed, loracle shifted to high-leverage perpetual contract trading on Hyperliquid. He has an aggressive style, with position sizes often reaching tens of millions of dollars.
Initially, loracle started with about $7.44 million in principal. By going long HYPE + BTC/ETH swing trades, after more than 10 months of effort, by early 2026 his account profit had rapidly grown to about $42 million, once achieving about $11.5 million in profit in a single week, and at one point becoming the largest HYPE long on-chain.
Afterward, loracle's trading became more diversified, taking positions in NVDA, PAXG, crude oil, ZEC, TON, LIT, and others, combining longs and shorts, and was once called a crypto-native macro trader. Around May of this year, his cumulative profit still stood at around $37 million.
Shorting HYPE lost over $40 million
But then things took a turn. The former Hyperliquid ecosystem contributor and biggest long turned into HYPE's biggest short, with notional positions once reaching hundreds of millions of dollars, and as of now his position is still underwater by about $9 million.
In late April, loracle opened his first position—a 5x leveraged HYPE short worth about $11 million—when HYPE was priced at around $40. Entering May, HYPE continued to rise, and the "unconvinced" loracle kept shorting HYPE. By late May, it was reported that loracle's HYPE short position had reached $103 million.
In early June, HYPE hit an all-time high of $75, and loracle finally succumbed to pressure and began closing positions. In just about 1 month, the over $40 million in perpetual contract profits that loracle had built up over more than 10 months were completely wiped out. By the time loracle fully closed the position on June 2, it had lost over $46 million on HYPE.
After this major loss, loracle's contract operations gradually began to go off the rails...
Blinded by losses, loracle staged the classic retail investor move—turning to long HYPE. According to on-chain data, after closing the HYPE short position, on June 3 loracle opened a long position of 1.36 million HYPE, with a position value of about $17 million and an average entry price of $70.5. However, this time loracle not only opened the long at the very top, but also closed it at the very bottom. In July, HYPE continued to decline, and loracle finally closed the HYPE long on July 30 at an average price of $54.57, losing about $2.3 million.
Just days after closing the HYPE long, in early August loracle opened a 3x leveraged HYPE short position. At its peak, the notional value of loracle's HYPE short position exceeded $54 million. As HYPE's price rose again in late August, loracle began closing the short and reducing the position. As of now, loracle still holds 363,300 HYPE, with a position value of about $28 million, an unrealized loss of about $9 million, and a liquidation price of $166.
In terms of total historical profit and loss, loracle has lost over $40 million in HYPE trading history, far outweighing its profits in cryptocurrencies such as BTC and ETH and in commodities.
The source of unlimited ammunition is still HYPE, having once staked nearly 5 million HYPE
As of press time, loracle's total contract losses are about $25 million. However, some on-chain analysts previously believed that loracle was not naked shorting HYPE, because as an early contributor to Hyperliquid, it holds a large amount of HYPE spot, worth over hundreds of millions of dollars, most of which is staked. Therefore, loracle's opening of HYPE short positions was once regarded as a hedging operation.
Such a massive HYPE spot position is also the source of loracle's infinite ammunition for its contracts. According to multiple on-chain analysts, the following two HYPE staking addresses belong to loracle:
1. 0xe44bd27c9f10fa2f89fdb3ab4b4f0e460da29ea8
2. 0xfae95f601f3a25ace60d19dbb929f2a5c57e3571
According to statistics, at their peak, these two addresses had a total of 4.948 million HYPE staked. At the current HYPE price, the total value would be $385 million.
But now, all 3.35 million HYPE initially staked by address 2 has been fully withdrawn, and address 1 has only 96,940 HYPE remaining in staking. Adding the 240,000 HYPE held in trading address 2 mentioned above, loracle currently holds approximately 336,000 HYPE in total, worth about $26.2 million.
From this perspective, rather than proving itself through contract trading, loracle would have been better off simply holding HYPE spot consistently. But this is all hindsight analysis. In reality, the principal it used after suffering massive losses also mainly came from selling HYPE spot.
Starting in April of this year, loracle began selling off its HYPE holdings one after another. In early April, loracle sold approximately 450,000 HYPE at an average price of $35, for a total value of about $15 million. In May, loracle unlocked a cumulative 3 times, totaling 2.008 million HYPE. In clearly traceable on-chain records, on May 21 (the day HYPE first broke its all-time high), it dumped 557,000 HYPE, worth about $33.35 million.
loracle could be described as "rising by HYPE, falling by HYPE." The idea that as long as you don't leave the gambling table you'll always make a comeback, at least judging from the past experiences of Hyperliquid whales, does not hold up. Cases of going from universal attention to a zeroed-out account are everywhere. In the end, how will things turn out for this former number one HYPE short seller and current number one Meme short seller? Odaily Planet Daily will continue to follow the story.
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