Did a Trump Insider Just Bet $105M on Bitcoin?
Like any good conspiracy, there has to be at least a little bit of truth buried somewhere underneath it. So get your tin foil hats on, because this one is actually pretty interesting. Let's start with what we know is true.
On Wednesday, August 19, a pretty important meeting is expected to take place at the White House involving some of the biggest names in crypto, prediction markets and AI. President Trump is expected to attend, along with executives associated with Coinbase, Ripple, Gemini, Robinhood, Polymarket and Kalshi, among others. CFTC Chairman Mike Selig is also expected to be there, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have reportedly been mentioned as possible attendees.
The meeting isn't just a random gathering of crypto CEOs either. It is expected to help kick off a policy dialogue around some of the biggest questions still hanging over the U.S. digital-asset industry: crypto regulation, market structure, prediction markets and how the existing financial regulatory system should deal with all of this stuff.
And the timing is worth paying attention to. The very next day, August 20, the CFTC's new Innovation Advisory Committee is holding its first meeting. The agenda for that meeting is already public, and the first session is literally called: “Crypto’s Regulatory Evolution: From Uncertainty to Clarity.”
The CFTC says the discussion will cover the absence of a comprehensive federal crypto market-structure framework, overlapping regulatory jurisdictions, regulation by enforcement, how uncertainty has affected investment and innovation, and what regulators can do to provide greater clarity.
Now we can put on the tin foil hat. At roughly the same time this meeting was announced, a story started spreading across social media claiming that an alleged “Trump insider” had just opened a $105 million Bitcoin long and had a 100% trading win rate.
The implication was pretty obvious: What does this person know?
So do a little investigating. There is in fact a very large trader on Hyperliquid who has developed something of a cult following online. The wallet is commonly known as pension-usdt.eth, and unlike a lot of crypto stories, we don't have to simply take someone's word for its trading history.
Hyperliquid is an on-chain trading platform, which means the wallet and its trading activity are publicly visible. And this trader is legitimately impressive. One tracking service, Owly, currently shows the wallet with 109 closed trades and an 85.32% win rate. Do the math and that works out to roughly: 93 winning trades and 16 losing trades.
So right away we can throw out one part of the viral story. The internet has repeatedly claimed this mysterious trader has a 100% win rate. It doesn't. But a 85% win rate over more than 100 closed trades is still pretty damn impressive. We don't need to make it 100% to make the story interesting.
And this isn't someone making $500 bets from their basement. The wallet regularly moves tens of millions of dollars into leveraged Bitcoin and Ethereum positions.
This trader also has some spectacular winning streak. By June, the wallet had reportedly put together 23 consecutive profitable trades. One of the trades during that run involved closing a massive 60,000 ETH short for approximately $5.8 million in profit.
That's probably where some of the mythology around this trader comes from.
Twenty-three wins in a row eventually becomes “this guy never loses,” which eventually becomes “100% win rate,” which apparently eventually becomes “Trump's insider.”
Welcome to the internet.
The really interesting part isn't whether this trader wins every trade. We already know that isn't true. The interesting part is that this is a real wallet, controlling real money, making extremely large directional bets, with a historically very strong trading record.
And now the viral claim is that this trader has taken an approximately $105 million Bitcoin long just days before one of the more important crypto-policy meetings we've seen at the White House.
That's where the conspiracy begins and conspiracy can be fun.
We have an important White House crypto meeting on August 19. With some of the largest crypto and prediction-market companies in the United States expected to be represented. The President is expected to attend, and you have the CFTC beginning its new Innovation Advisory Committee meeting the following day with an agenda specifically focused on moving crypto regulation “from uncertainty to clarity.”
And floating around in the background is a mysterious whale with an 85%+ historical win rate reportedly sitting on a gigantic Bitcoin long. Does the trader know something? Maybe. Or maybe an extremely successful crypto trader simply thinks Bitcoin is going higher.
The facts are interesting enough that you don't actually need to make anything up.
