Black Swan Operator? Who Exactly is Garrett Jin?

Precisely shorting for a profit of $80 million, on-chain data reveals suspicious funds linked to Garrett Jin.

Written by: @eyeonchains

Translated by: angelilu, Foresight News

The market witnessed a black swan event yesterday, marking the largest liquidation day in crypto history. However, someone managed to precisely short in advance, opening over $1.1 billion in short positions and earning more than $80 million in 24 hours. Was this foresight or insider information? The true identity of this whale has attracted market attention.

An investigation by on-chain detective Eye on Threads has unmasked the whale. To summarize, Eye believes the whale is a Chinese individual named Garrett Bullish with multiple backgrounds. His crypto-related experience includes serving as Operations Director at Huobi (HTX), CEO of BitForex (which was involved in a trading scandal), and founding several crypto projects. Meanwhile, the source of his massive funds also appears suspicious.

Regarding this incident, CZ once retweeted a post hoping someone could cross-verify the information. Lookonchain stated that JackYi, founder of Liquid Capital, might know more. The wallet 0x52d3, which sent ETH for gas, also transferred 1.31 million USDC to Trend Research’s Binance deposit address.

At the time of writing, reputable on-chain investigator ZachXBT has only expressed doubts about this investigation, stating, “You clearly stated in your post that the bitcoin whale is Garrett Jin, but now in your reply to me, you say these BTCs definitely come from multiple entities.”

The authenticity of this investigation has yet to be confirmed. Below is Eye’s full analysis (slightly edited during translation), with Foresight News continuing to monitor further developments:

Massive Fund Flows Draw Attention

The investigation into the identity of the mysterious Hyperliquid/Hyperunit whale shows that this whale holds over 100,000 bitcoins. Recently, he sold more than $4.23 billion worth of bitcoin to purchase ethereum, and also executed $735 million in bitcoin short orders on the same platform.

Between August and September, this whale used Hyperliquid/Hyperunit’s spot and perpetual contracts to sell over 35,000 bitcoins from a series of bitcoin wallets in exchange for ethereum. At the same time, multiple ethereum addresses received a total of over 570,000 ETH, all of which were subsequently deposited into the same Beacon deposit contract for staking.

Clues to the Identity Gradually Emerge

By analyzing the whale address that opened the $735 million bitcoin short, on-chain detective Eye noticed it received fees from a specific wallet. Tracing these transactions revealed fund flows linked to an address named “ereignis.eth.”

Further investigation showed that “ereignis.eth” also owns another ENS name: “garrettjin.eth,” which points to X (Twitter) user @GarrettBullish.

Background of Garrett Jin

Garrett Jin graduated from Boston University with a degree in Economics in 2008. His career began at China Construction Bank. In 2012, he founded Da Yo Trading (HK), later serving as Operations Director at Huobi (HTX) until 2015. He then moved to Frankfurt, co-founded a medical platform, and left the position in 2017.

From 2017 to 2020, he served as CEO of @bitforexcom. The exchange later became embroiled in scandal, accused of faking trading volumes, and suffered a private key leak in early 2024, resulting in about $57 million being withdrawn. The exchange was subsequently issued a fraud warning by the Hong Kong SFC and ultimately shut down, leaving many users with asset losses.

Project History and Source of Funds

During the Bitforex collapse in 2020, Garrett founded WaveLabs VC and launched several projects, including TanglePay, IotaBee, and GroupFi. The ENS name “ereignis.eth” (meaning “event” in German) further confirms his connection to these large-scale operations.

The investigation shows that the Hyperliquid/Hyperunit whale’s funds mainly originated from bitcoins withdrawn from exchanges such as HTX and OKX several years ago. This pattern forms a suspicious link with his work experience at Huobi and the funds that disappeared in the Bitforex scam.

Current Status

Currently, Garrett still holds 46,295 bitcoins (worth about $5.19 billion). In addition, he is the founder of @XHash_com, a non-custodial ethereum staking platform that may be used to introduce suspicious funds.

Notably, after the related investigation was published, Garrett immediately removed @XHash_com from his X profile and changed his profile picture. He also modified his Telegram privacy settings, hiding previously public photos and phone numbers. On-chain detective Eye commented, “It seems he really has something to hide.”