BTC, ETH, XRP Tumble as Wintermute Builds Heavy Short Positions

Nearly $100 million in longs were wrecked in the past hour. Bitcoin’s price suddenly dipped to $75,500 after it failed to remain above $77,000 during the weekend. Most altcoins have followed suit, including the largest ones, which performed a lot better on Friday and Saturday. This volatility, untypical for the weekend, came amid reports that one of the most prominent market makers, Wintermute, had gone short on a few fronts. At first, Onchain Lens noted that the company sent nearly $60 million in BTC and SOL to Binance and Coinbase, likely intending to sell. In addition, the analytics resource said Wintermute has built up a massive futures position on Hyperliquid. Although current on-chain data shows that the company has a $13.85 million long position, the lion’s share of this leveraged trade is shorting the market – $146.19 million. WINTERMUTE IS HEAVILY SHORT 🐻 Wintermute currently holds $160.03M in open positions on Hyperliquid, with $146.19M short and just $13.85M long. The positions are sitting at a combined unrealized loss of $3.66M, while earning $2.14M in funding. Despite this, Wintermute remains… pic.twitter.com/fOYjGCyEpz — Onchain Lens (@OnchainLens) August 22, 2026 Bit...