Huang Licheng, the trader known online as “Machi,” saw the value of a Hyperliquid perpetual-futures position collapse from about $12.25 million to $21,800 on Oct. 15 after another series of liquidations, according to trading records cited in the report. The episode erased months of gains and extended a pattern in which Huang has repeatedly rebuilt large leveraged Ethereum positions only to face rapid drawdowns.
The final sell-off involved four forced sales of between 200 and 800 tokens, with the last reported batch closed at $2,331. The liquidations occurred during a broader market decline that pushed Bitcoin below $81,000, according to the report. Huang reportedly reopened a 25x leveraged position roughly 25 minutes after the account was nearly wiped out, maintaining the aggressive approach that has defined his recent trading activity.
On-chain records referenced in the report showed Huang holding a 25x long position worth 6,100 ETH at the time of writing, carrying an unrealized gain of roughly $260,000. That position followed a day in which his account’s value fell by more than 99% within hours.
Four months of gains disappear
The Oct. 15 event wiped out gains that had accumulated after Huang began rebuilding his account from a reported $56,132 deposit in late June. At several points during the recovery, his long exposure in Bitcoin and Ethereum exceeded $100 million.
By early September, the report said Huang had increased his trading capital from about $150,000 to $11 million through a series of rolling long positions. Later that month, his book reportedly showed an unrealized profit of $6.7 million. Those paper gains became increasingly fragile as the size of his ETH exposure rose and market prices moved against leveraged longs.
On Oct. 8, Huang was reported to have cut 4,700 ETH from his holdings, realizing a loss of about $570,000. A position that had previously shown a floating profit of about $4 million had moved to an unrealized loss of roughly $3 million, according to the report.
The following week compounded the damage. On Oct. 5, the account reportedly showed a profit near $5.5 million. Around seven days later, its balance had dropped to approximately $560,000 after losses of more than $11.2 million. The Oct. 15 liquidations then brought the position close to zero.
Ethereum remained the largest risk
ETH has been Huang’s most frequent and largest perpetual-futures exposure since July of the previous year, based on transaction summaries cited in the report. He also traded contracts tied to Bitcoin, HYPE, PUMP, UNI, ENA and PONS, but Ethereum repeatedly accounted for his biggest directional wagers.
In September of the previous year, Huang reportedly opened a 30,000 ETH long position at an entry price of $4,399. The position was valued above $120 million and at one point carried an unrealized loss approaching $10 million.
He later added collateral to Ethereum long positions through six transfers to Hyperliquid in November and December, the report said. A market decline on Dec. 17 pushed the running result into negative territory, with cumulative losses already exceeding $23 million.
The pattern continued into the current year. Huang’s record reportedly showed a $3.5 million profit in January, alongside a win rate above 84%. In February, losses exceeded $27 million over 20 days and the balance in the trading account fell to around $90,000.
Liquidations have repeatedly reset the account
The Oct. 15 collapse was at least the fourth major liquidation period recorded between June and October. In early June, Huang reportedly faced seven liquidations across two days while maintaining a 25x leveraged long position involving 400 ETH.
A June 18 decline produced a reported one-day loss of $320,000. On July 31, three liquidations pushed account funds below $100,000. These episodes show how quickly a highly leveraged perpetual position can lose its margin buffer when prices move in the wrong direction.
Perpetual futures allow traders to take large positions using collateral rather than paying the full value of the assets upfront. A 25x position magnifies both gains and losses: a relatively small adverse move can trigger liquidation, where the platform closes the trade to prevent the account from falling below required collateral levels.
That structure helps explain the sharp contrast between Huang’s large floating profits and his recurring account resets. A profitable position can expand rapidly during a favorable rally, but keeping the exposure open leaves the accumulated gains exposed to the same leverage that generated them.
Funding efforts followed earlier losses
The report described several efforts by Huang to obtain fresh trading capital after previous losses. In February, it cited movements involving assets deposited roughly five years earlier in a PleasrDAO-related treasury. In June, Huang reportedly sold 34 Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs at a loss exceeding $6.3 million.
He also issued a meme token called “Machi” in July. In late August, a plan described as “$1 million CTO Friend.tech” coincided with the FT token rising more than 30-fold, according to the report, and Huang later recorded profits above $1 million from that episode.
By early June, cumulative losses in the referenced dataset stood at around $80 million. Huang subsequently rebuilt enough capital for his account balance to increase 200-fold by late August, before the latest sequence of liquidations reversed that recovery.
The report put Huang’s total account profit and loss at a loss of nearly $34.8 million, with a maximum drawdown of 98.93%. The figures underline the limits of judging leveraged trading performance by peak account values or unrealized gains. In Huang’s case, repeated high-conviction ETH longs created periods of rapid recovery, but each recovery also restored the scale of risk that had previously driven the account toward liquidation.
Before opening high-leverage ETH positions, learn how to avoid liquidation and protect your capital from extreme drawdowns.
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