Trader nets over $1M on Papertrade’s launch, then loses $450K

Papertrade’s first weekend of live trading produced a perfect leverage parable. One wallet booked more than $1 million in profits, then watched $450,000 disappear when a batch of shorts got liquidated on Saturday night. The exchange offers up to 1,000x leverage on synthetic Bitcoin and ETH contracts. At that setting, a 0.1% move against you is enough to end the position. A seven-figure run, then a sharp reversal The wallet belongs to a trader with a significant track record on Hyperliquid, the decentralized derivatives venue that Papertrade builds on. It executed 305 trades during the first eight hours after launch. Its profits over that stretch came to about $1.28 million, with peak gains reportedly reaching $1.73 million. The second act was less flattering. Thirty short positions stayed open for more than three hours before they were liquidated on Saturday night, wiping out $450,000. How Papertrade works, and why it is unusual Papertrade launched live trading on HyperEVM, the smart contract layer connected to Hyperliquid, on October 10, 2026. Its pitch is a perpetual futures exchange that runs without traditional liquidity providers. Winning traders are paid from a pool called th...