James Wynn returned to the public with yet another high stakes bet. It's a short position that's 40x leveraged at 13.9 BTC or about $1,490,000 worth of Bitcoin. Hair width from Bitcoin's current trading zone sits at $108,630, an astonishing low liquidation price.
For those unfamiliar, Winn built a cult following after withdrawing a series of large, leveraged transactions. His official high lipid account once sat on an incredible $87 million profit, mainly due to a huge position he barely attempted. But the glory did not last long. Winn's aggressive strategy backfired spectacularly as Bitcoin began a volatile swing around the $105,000-$112,000 corridor.
A series of failed positions over the past few weeks have evaporated almost all of his profits. In just a week, he surprised a staggering $98 million loss. The meltdown wasn't pretty. At one point, he had held between $112,000 and 10,000 btc in length to be stopped at the weekend gap after the announcement of an EU tariff suspension. Attempts to shorten and catch drops ended in disaster.
As the market was whipped between $105,000 and $109,000, Winn was repeatedly liquidated and marked what was called a record setting tilt. After all the dust settled, Winn closed with a negative $12 million personal PNL, effectively erasing the legend he had built. The remaining balance on his account has dropped to $4.4 million, far from the exposure of the $1 billion concept he was famous for.
So, while this new 40X short has already attracted social media attention, in reality, Wynn's trading history is a warning story. It raises the question: is he trying to prove something, or is this the last position of a trader who has come too close to the sun? The liquidation price is very tight at $108,630, so this bet could end up just like everyone else.
