On-chain investigator EyeOnChain has reportedly identified the mysterious Hyperliquid whale controlling over 100,000 Bitcoin as Garrett Jin, the former CEO of collapsed exchange BitForex, which was accused of conducting a $56.5 million exit scam in February 2024.
According to the investigation, wallet addresses linked to the whale were traced back to Jin through ENS domains ereignis.eth and garrettjin.eth. The analysis also connected these wallets to funds withdrawn from major exchanges like HTX and Binance around seven to eight years ago, coinciding with Jin’s tenure at Huobi and later with the BitForex collapse.
EyeOnChains Links BitForex’s Former CEO Garrett Jin to Massive Bitcoin Whale Activity
Garrett Jin, a Boston University economics graduate (Class of 2008), served as CEO of BitForex from 2017 to 2020, during which the exchange faced accusations of inflating trading volumes and operating without proper registration in Japan.
In February 2024, BitForex froze withdrawals after nearly $57 million was drained from its hot wallets. The move came shortly after CEO Jason Luo’s resignation, leaving users unable to access their assets. Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission later issued fraud warnings against the exchange.
Jin, allegedly behind the Hyperliquid whale wallet, recently sold over $4.23 billion worth of Bitcoin to purchase Ethereum and opened a $735 million Bitcoin short position on Hyperliquid, just before President Trump’s tariff announcement that triggered a market crash.
Responding to the allegations, Jin denied ownership of the funds, saying, “The fund isn’t mine, it’s my clients’,” and claiming he operates nodes to provide in-house market insights. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao shared EyeOnChain’s findings on X, commenting, “Not sure of validity, hope someone can cross-check.”
EyeOnChain Traces ETH Staking and Fund Flows Linking Garrett Jin to BitForex Funds
The on-chain investigation found that an Ethereum staking contract associated with Garrett Jin was first funded by the wallet ereignis.eth on Binance Smart Chain. The same wallet, ereignis.eth, was the first to interact with the contract, depositing 32 ETH.
Further analysis showed that the wallet responsible for opening the $735 million Bitcoin short position on Hyperliquid received fee funds from another address that had transferred $4.1 million in USDC to a Binance deposit address shortly before the trade. That same Binance address had previously received $7.54 million from another wallet, which sent $40,000 in USDT to ereignis.eth exactly two weeks before the massive short position was opened.
Investigators also noted that ereignis.eth, which translates to “event” in German, is linked to another ENS name, garrettjin.eth, that directly leads to Jin’s X account. After EyeOnChain’s findings were shared publicly, Jin removed XHash from his profile bio and changed his profile picture, though he kept the same information on Telegram.
Jin founded XHash in 2024 as an institutional platform for non-custodial Ethereum staking, which EyeOnChains suggests may have been used to move funds connected to the BitForex collapse. Between 2020 and 2023, Jin ran WaveLabs VC, launching projects such as TanglePay and IotaBee, both of which shut down in 2024, and GroupFi, which remains active after receiving seed funding.
