From Anonymity to Spotlight: The Truth Behind Whale Garrett Jin and the Largest Liquidation in History

Author: @eyeonchains

Translation: angelilu, Foresight News

Original Title: The Biggest Liquidation Day in Crypto History’s Operator? Unveiling the True Identity of the Mysterious Whale Garrett Jin

The market witnessed a black swan event yesterday, marking the largest liquidation day in crypto history. However, someone managed to short the market with precision in advance, opening over $1.1 billions in short positions and profiting more than $80 millions within 24 hours. Was this foresight or insider information? The true identity of the whale has drawn market attention.

On-chain detective Eye revealed the whale’s identity in a Threads post. To summarize, Eye believes the whale is a Chinese individual named Garrett Bullish with a multifaceted background in crypto. Garrett previously served as Operations Director at Huobi (HTX), was CEO of BitForex (which was embroiled in trading scandals), and founded several crypto projects. At the same time, the source of his massive funds also appears suspicious.

Regarding this incident, CZ once retweeted a post expressing hope that someone could cross-verify the information. Lookonchain stated that JackYi, founder of Liquid Capital, might know more. The wallet 0x52d3, which sent ETH to obtain gas, also transferred 1.31 million USDC to Trend Research’s Binance deposit address.

Renowned on-chain detective ZachXBT, as of this writing, has only expressed doubts about the investigation, stating, “You clearly claim in your post that the Bitcoin whale is Garrett Jin, but now you’re telling me these BTC must be from multiple entities.”

Currently, the authenticity of this investigation cannot be confirmed. Below is the full analysis by Eye (with minor edits during translation), with Foresight News continuing to monitor further developments:

Massive Fund Flows Draw Attention

Investigations into the mysterious Hyperliquid/Hyperunit whale reveal that this whale holds over 100,000 bitcoins. Recently, he sold more than $4.23 billions worth of bitcoin to purchase ethereum, and also executed $735 millions in bitcoin short orders on the same platform.

Between August and September, this whale used Hyperliquid/Hyperunit spot and perpetual contracts to sell over 35,000 bitcoins from a series of bitcoin wallets in exchange for ethereum. At the same time, multiple ethereum addresses received a total of over 570,000 ETH, all of which were subsequently deposited into the same Beacon deposit contract for staking.

Identity Clues Gradually Emerge

By analyzing the whale address that opened the $735 millions bitcoin short, on-chain detective Eye noticed it received fees from a specific wallet. Tracing these transactions revealed fund flows linked to an address named “ereignis.eth”.

Further investigation showed that “ereignis.eth” also owns another ENS name: “garrettjin.eth”, which points to X (Twitter) user @GarrettBullish.

Garrett Jin’s Background

Garrett Jin graduated from Boston University with a degree in Economics in 2008, and began his career at China Construction Bank. In 2012, he founded Da Yo Trading (HK), later serving as Operations Director at Huobi (HTX) until 2015. He then moved to Frankfurt, co-founded a medical platform, and left that position in 2017.

From 2017 to 2020, he served as CEO of @bitforexcom. The exchange later became embroiled in scandal, accused of faking trading volumes, and suffered a private key leak in early 2024, resulting in about $57 millions being withdrawn. The exchange was subsequently issued a fraud warning by the Hong Kong SFC and ultimately shut down, leaving many users with asset losses.

Project History and Source of Funds

During the Bitforex collapse, Garrett founded WaveLabs VC in 2020 and launched several projects, including TanglePay, IotaBee, and GroupFi. The ENS name “ereignis.eth” (meaning “event” in German) further confirms his connection to these large-scale operations.

Investigations show that the Hyperliquid/Hyperunit whale’s funds mainly originated from bitcoins withdrawn from exchanges such as HTX and OKX several years ago, a pattern that raises suspicious links to his work at Huobi and the funds that disappeared in the Bitforex scam.

Current Status

Currently, Garrett still holds 46,295 bitcoins (worth about $5.19 billions). In addition, he is the founder of @XHash_com, a non-custodial ethereum staking platform that may have been used to introduce suspicious funds.

Notably, after the related investigation was published, Garrett immediately removed @XHash_com from his X profile, changed his profile picture, and modified his Telegram privacy settings to hide previously public photos and phone numbers. On-chain detective Eye commented, “It seems he does have something to hide.”