Garrett Jin
Ex-BitForex executive whose wallets bought 100,000 BTC in 2018, shorted the 2025 crash and hold $315M of ZEC.
- Est. PnL
- ~$8.5B
- Location
- China
- Wallets tied to him bought 100,784 BTC in 2018 at $7,242, later worth over $10B
- Shorted $1.1B of BTC and ETH on Hyperliquid 30 hours before Trump's China tariff post, and made about $150M on the biggest liquidation day ever
- Everyone was laughing at his $34M losing ZEC short until he posted his spot bag: $315M of ZEC bought at $437, about 1% of supply
- Swapped $50M of stablecoins for AAVE in March 2026 and got back 327 tokens worth $38k, losing almost all of it due to slippage
- From Boston College to China Construction Bank, Huobi, BitForex, IOTA and ETH staking: five cycles since 2013, and now runs a top-10 rising finance Substack newsletter
Notable trades
BTC
2018
~$10B
The 2018 stack. The cluster accumulated about 100,784 BTC in May and June 2018 at an average near $7,242, about $730M of cost. It marked above $10B at the 2025 peak. About 89,000 BTC were sold from August 2025; about 9,343 were still held in May 2026.
ETH
Aug 2025 to Sep 2026
~-$1.5B
Bitcoin into ether. From August 2025 the cluster sold about 89,000 BTC and bought about 900,000 ETH, most of it above $3,500, staking part through XHash-linked contracts. In May 2026 a linked wallet deposited 577,896 ETH, about $1.35B, to Binance over four days, and in September 2026 it sold 35,001 ETH near $2,500 to margin the ZEC short. At $2,500 the sleeve is about $1.5B below cost.
BTC
Oct 2025
~$150M to $200M
Short into the 10 October 2025 crash. The cluster ran a combined short of about $1.1B notional, roughly $735M in BTC and $353M in ETH, opened about 30 minutes before Trump's 20:50 UTC tariff post, with the last $23M of ETH a minute before it, then closed after the move. Reported profit ranges from $80M to $200M, most often $150M to $200M.
ETH
Dec 2025 to Jan 2026
~-$250M
Leveraged ether long. By January 2026 the account held about 213,000 ETH, some $670M notional, bought near $3,147. It was closed on 31 January 2026 as ether fell toward $1,800, for a loss of about $230M to $250M, leaving $53 in the account and the venue lifetime near -$128M.
AAVE
Mar 2026
~-$50.4M
The slippage print. In March 2026 the cluster swapped 50.43M aEthUSDT for 327.2 AAVE in one transaction, about $50.4M lost to slippage.
Binance Life
Feb to Jun 2026
~$150M held
Bought about 284M to 290M Binance Life (币安人生) tokens between February and June 2026, about 29% of supply. Marked near $237M in June and near $150M in September 2026. No cost basis published.
ZEC
May to Sep 2026
~$198M, mostly unrealized
Spot bag and the short against it. About 202,078 ZEC withdrawn from Binance around December 2025 near $437, roughly $88M of cost, worth about $315M in September 2026. On Hyperliquid he traded ZEC both ways: a 3x short of 57,460 ZEC in May 2026, two June shorts that made about $11.66M and a long that made about $417k. A short reopened in late June grew to about 39,760 ZEC by 7 September; closing 7,000 of it on 8 September lost $4.12M, and by 19 September about 38,000 ZEC were short, some $34M underwater. On 18 September he sold 35,001 ETH to lift its liquidation price from about $2,631 to about $4,738. The next day he posted the spot addresses and called the short a partial hedge.
BTC
May to Sep 2026
~$1M to $2.7M
The 2026 bitcoin long. Opened on 20 May 2026 at 504.4 BTC and 5x, grown to 1,868 BTC at 3x by August at about $77,090, then sold between 3 and 7 September for $1M to $2.7M, roughly its funding bill. Rebuilt on 18 September as about 1,330 BTC at 3x near $78,057.
HYPE
May to Sep 2026
~$4.4M
Bought about 42,524 HYPE on 20 May 2026 and added through June. Sold 184,102 HYPE near $73.58 in June for about $2.83M and 114,000 HYPE near $86.3 on 7 September for about $1.57M.
Trading style
Large spot positions held for years, with perps used as hedges. The spot book has been BTC, then ETH, then ZEC. On Hyperliquid he trades at 3x to 5x, mostly shorts against coins he also holds, and adds collateral to a losing hedge rather than closing it. He will go from short to long on the same coin within a few weeks.
He sizes to the liquidity: if the liquidity was enough, a bigger position would be placed. His research starts from macro, tariffs, gold, oil and equities, and gets to bitcoin last. He quotes Bruce Lee's be water for switching between bull, bear and chop markets, sells premium in chop and says timing is the hard part. In a bull market the rule is delusional bull + risk control.
Controversies
The October 2025 short and the Trump tariff post
October 2025
The $1.1B short was built about 30 hours before Trump's tariff post, which led to accusations of insider trading and of links to the Trump family. Jin denied both, said the capital belonged to clients and called the position a partial hedge. ZachXBT said the wallets looked more like a friend of Jin's than Jin himself, and a second person was later tied, holder of lambda.eth, gasfee.eth and finish.eth, to the same cluster. No regulator or court has named him.
Money sent to Trend Research
2025 to 2026
Trend Research is the trading firm of Jack Yi, founder of LD Capital, known for large leveraged ether longs. In early 2026 its 651,500 ETH long was stopped out for a loss of about $734M. Wallets tied to Jin sent Trend large sums over the same months, and in October 2025 a 1.31M USDC transfer from the same wallets went to a Trend Research deposit address at Binance. That points to Jin's side funding part of Trend's ether bet. Nothing public shows the two share an owner.
Quotes
“there's a time for bear traders, chop traders, bull traders. be water, my friend. switch mindset”
“The biggest problem in the crypto space is that most projects have no cash flow.”
Interviews
Contributors
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