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Somebody is sitting on a $25.7 million loss and everybody can watch it happen in real time. A Hyperliquid whale, tracked by analyst Ember and linked by on-chain sleuths to the "Garrett Jin whale entity," shorted 32,760 ZEC in early July at an average price near $444. ZEC crossed $1,200 on Sept. 7. The ZEC short is now $25.7 million underwater, and the position is public property: every margin top-up, every funding payment, visible on HypurrScan.
"ZEC is too strong, $1,200+. The Garrett Jin whale entity is probably not happy: as the largest short holder, they are now down $25.7 million on paper. They shorted 32,760 ZEC in early July at $444. In three months, ZEC surged from $400 to $1,200+." — Ember (@EmberCN), September 7, 2026
The ZEC short that met an ETF
The trade was not insane when it was placed. In early July, ZEC traded near $444, and shorting a nine-year-old privacy coin after a 100% run looked like a reversion bet with a tailwind of history behind it. What the trader could not price was the ZCSH spot ETF listing on NYSE Arca on Aug. 25, the first US exchange-traded product for a privacy coin. Post-launch, ZEC traded near $855 with 24-hour CEX volume above $1.2 billion, and the squeeze never stopped. By Sept. 7, the intraday range ran $1,074 to $1,249.
The account is not purely a disaster. The same address holds a Bitcoin long worth roughly $107 million, up $4.42 million on paper. But funding costs on that long have burned $2.05 million, and netting everything, the snapshot is at least $23 million negative. The structure looks like a failed hedge: a big BTC long paired against a short on a high-beta alt, presumably betting the alt would underperform Bitcoin. ZEC outperformed Bitcoin by roughly 3x in three months. That is the trade gone wrong, not the platform.
What the ZEC short teaches about transparent leverage
Here is the paradox worth chewing on. Zcash exists to hide financial information. Hyperliquid exists to expose it. The largest losing ZEC position in the market is fully visible on a public DEX ledger, which means every liquidation-hunting algorithm on Earth knows the whale's pain threshold. Covering 32,760 ZEC means buying it back into a thin order book, and that buy pressure risks triggering the very squeeze the close is meant to avoid. The whale is trapped by its own size, and the crowd knows it.
Caveats before you treat this as confirmed fact: public data cannot prove wallet ownership, no signed message ties the address to Garrett Jin, and the $25.7 million is an open paper loss that shrinks if ZEC retraces. As on-chain analysis keeps showing, snapshots are not settlements. But the setup is the lesson: shorting an asset with a brand-new institutional bid, at 5x scale, on a venue where your liquidation level is public, is how you turn a hedged book into a feeding frenzy. The number to watch is ZEC funding. If shorts keep paying to stay in the trade while price holds above $1,200, the squeeze has more room to run, and this loss is a waypoint, not a destination.
