100,000 Btc Hyperliquid Whale Allegedly Linked To Former Bitforex Ceo In Fraud Scandal – “The Fund Isn’t Mine”

What Happened

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traced the whale’s wallet addresses back to Jin through ENS domains ereignis.eth and garrettjin.eth, connecting funds withdrawn from exchanges like HTX and Binance seven to eight years ago to his tenure at Huobi and the BitForex collapse.

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

Market Context

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.

Why It Matters

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.

Details

Former Exchange CEO Denies Ownership as CZ Questions Validity

BitForex froze withdrawals in February 2024 after approximately $57 million was withdrawn from hot wallets without explanation, with CEO Jason Luo resigning just days before the platform became inaccessible.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

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.

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 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.

BitForex Exit Scam Left Users With $57M in Losses

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.