Ninety Percent of Tokens Surge, Why Did Wintermute Reverse $160 Million Crypto Short Position?

BlockBeats News, August 24th, according to TradingBeats monitoring, as of the time of writing, among the 76 main perpetual contracts with a trading volume of over $1 million in the past 24 hours on Hyperliquid, 66 have seen an increase, accounting for approximately 86.8% of the total, with a median increase of about 4.6%. BTC has risen by about 1.8%, ETH by about 2.7%, and some altcoins have seen an increase of over 10%.

During the widespread surge in cryptocurrency assets, three market maker addresses identified as Wintermute, Cumberland, and Auros were forced to absorb large sell orders, holding a total of approximately $230 million in crypto shorts, with long positions only around $9.93 million, a net short position of about $220 million, and a total unrealized loss of approximately $6.92 million.

Among them, the single address held by Wintermute has 61 short positions worth about $163 million; the combined short positions in ETH, BTC, SOL, and HYPE are close to $100 million. Cumberland and Auros have short positions of approximately $20.63 million and $46.87 million, respectively.

Wintermute currently has 1,718 open crypto orders, with 854 sell orders and 864 buy orders, covering 77 contracts, 74 of which simultaneously maintain bid and ask quotes; Auros similarly has buy and sell orders on most targets, maintaining a typical market-making structure overall.

As the market continues to rise and active buying pressure keeps consuming the sell side, market makers as counterparties will passively sell more contracts, tilting the perpetual inventory towards the short side. The $160 million short position of Wintermute is the result of a one-sided uptrend pushing risk inventory towards liquidity providers.

Disclaimer: At the time of writing, Wintermute has started to continuously buy back its short positions and reduce its net short exposure.