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TL;DR

  • A Hyperliquid whale holds a $44 million long on 35 million XRP, nearly 80% of large-wallet XRP longs, with liquidation at $0.9626, about 23% below the current price.

  • Crypto liquidations reached $386.42 million in 24 hours, 88% of them longs, led by Bitcoin ($100.74 million) and Ethereum ($49.31 million).

  • US spot Bitcoin ETFs saw $398.62 million in net daily outflows, led by Fidelity’s FBTC ($164 million), while 44,857 ETH left spot Ethereum ETFs.

  • Binance posted a record $15.4 billion weekly net outflow following a $6.3 billion hack the FBI attributed to North Korea.

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  • This week’s key US triggers are the midterm elections and JOLTS (Tuesday), ISM services (Wednesday), the Fed balance sheet (Thursday) and Nonfarm Payrolls (Friday).

The crypto market greeted Tuesday morning, November 3, with a massive wave of margin position closures. Over the past 24 hours, the positions of 94,997 traders were forcibly liquidated for a total of $386.42 million, with 88% of all losses ($339.92 million) falling on long contracts, while Bitcoin ($100.74 million) and Ethereum ($49.31 million) led in liquidation volume as per CoinGlass.

A strong bearish skew persists in the US spot ETF sector: the net daily outflow from BTC funds amounted to $398.62 million, with the main blow falling on the Fidelity fund (FBTC), which saw $164 million leave. Over the day, 44,857 ETH were withdrawn from spot Ethereum ETFs. The combined assets under management (AUM) of all crypto ETFs stand at $95.83 billion as per SoSoValue.

The current daily outflow has spread across the entire line of exchange-traded products: SOL funds lost 129.19 thousand coins, outflows from XRP products amounted to 128.54 thousand tokens, and the specialized HYPE and ZEC funds shed 85.07 thousand and 13.53 thousand coins, respectively. Major operators are preemptively pulling liquidity out of volatile instruments ahead of the US midterm elections.

Amid the decline in market capitalization, a sharp split among participants has emerged: while retail investors are locking in losses en masse and most whales are betting on a decline, some large on-chain operators are opening aggressive counter-trend positions on decentralized exchanges.

The main event of the morning session was the actions of an unknown major player on the Hyperliquid platform, who, despite the overall market decline (NEAR dropped to $3.79, BNB to $697.67), stubbornly holds an XRP long worth tens of millions of dollars, turning the contract into the main barometer of local altcoin resilience.

A $44 million bet: How one whale defends XRP against the entire market

The decentralized futures platform Hyperliquid is currently accumulating peak institutional volumes. At the same time, on-chain analytics of top wallets with balances of $1 million or more shows a strong bearish skew in open interest.

Of these wallets' total open positions of $4.5 billion, short contracts (shorts) account for $3.08 billion. Their long volume is limited to a modest $1.46 billion.

Leviathan addresses with positions of $50 million or more are almost unanimously betting on a further market decline. Against this grim backdrop, the long position of wallet '0x31b1ecf848443472e34d204a134812d86ab01434' remains the largest and riskiest counter-trend position in the system.

The whale holds 35.03 million XRP tokens. The notional value of the open position is $44.05 million at 10x Cross leverage.

The average entry price is $1.1298. At the peak of the morning momentum, the whale's unrealized profit exceeded $4.47 million, which amounts to more than 101% net return on the margin capital invested.

At the same time, the account's overall result is far from ideal: due to overall asset volatility, this wallet's net PnL over the past 30 days has fallen by $8.45 million.

The critical threshold in this whole story remains the forced liquidation price. The automatic position closure threshold sits at $0.9626.

The current XRP market price of around $1.2558 leaves the trader a buffer of about 23% to the liquidation point.

Large wallets' XRP positions on Hyperliquid are also skewed toward the bears. Against long positions of $55.70 million stands a massive wall of shorts worth $80.93 million. Nearly 80% of these longs belong to a single whale.

Minus $15 billion in a week. Main infrastructure shocks, announcements and new threats

This morning's news backdrop points to a massive and painful restructuring of the entire market infrastructure. The central theme remains a severe liquidity crisis on centralized exchanges.

  • $6.3 billion Binance hack and the FBI's position: The agency officially attributed the attack to North Korean state cyber units. An analysis by lawyers at Reed Smith and Lathrop GPM showed that the exchange's insurance policies will not cover the damage. Standard D&O insurance protects only top management, while war exclusion clauses fully rule out payouts in the event of cyberwarfare waged by foreign states.

  • Record outflow of $15.4 billion: The weekly net capital outflow from Binance hit an all-time high. This volume exceeds the individual reserves of Bybit or Bitfinex and surpasses the combined balance of Gate, Bitget and KuCoin, which keeps the price of BNB at local lows.

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao's loud statements about rising risks to the financial system from automated AI-powered cyberattacks came amid the incident at the exchange he created, which showed the ineffectiveness of classic defense mechanisms against coordinated cyber operations. Zhao stressed that commercial banks, due to outdated IT architecture, are more vulnerable than crypto platforms.

Against this backdrop, decentralized protocols are confidently expanding their institutional presence. Hyperliquid's annual revenue has reached $713 million, and trading volume in perpetuals on stocks and commodities via HIP-3 has exceeded $500 billion. Building on these technologies, the operator of the New York Stock Exchange (ICE) and Kraken are already preparing to launch regulated futures in the US with White House support.

Meanwhile, serious changes are also taking place at the level of the largest L1 ecosystems. House of Stake (NEAR Protocol) participants approved the deflationary initiative HSP-029 with 99.96% of the vote, reducing annual emissions from 2.5% to 1.6% over 24 months. Daily issuance of new tokens is being cut from 89,500 to 57,300, while amid the general market decline the asset briefly dropped to $3.79.

Skepticism is meanwhile growing in the Ripple camp: the company reports that issuance of its dollar token RLUSD has surpassed $1 billion through partnerships with trust banks, but XRP holders are voicing open dissatisfaction. RLUSD is a centralized asset subject to freezing under US law, while XRP's decentralized status is not yet reflected in its market valuation.

At the same time, the Ethereum Foundation launched a platform for using the network as digital public infrastructure (DPI) for governments. Case studies on digital identity in Bhutan and confidential humanitarian aid systems have been published. At Devcon 8 in Mumbai, Vitalik Buterin called for developing verifiable code to minimize dependence on closed software and AI systems.

What's next. Key markers to watch and the calendar of the US macroeconomic storm.

In the coming sessions, capital flows in the crypto market will be largely determined by external macroeconomic and political triggers. Investors and market makers need to keep the following critical factors in focus:

  • US Congressional midterm elections: The main political factor of this Tuesday, forcing large funds to preemptively close margin positions, cut leverage and hedge risks ahead of a change in the regulatory landscape.

  • Official JOLTS labor market report: Tuesday's release of job openings data will determine the short-term dynamics of the US dollar index and directly affect liquidity in high-risk assets.

  • ISM non-manufacturing business activity indices: Wednesday's statistics will highlight the real state of the US economy and shape the medium-term sentiment of major futures market operators.

  • Fed balance sheet on Thursday and Friday's Nonfarm Payrolls report: The key macroeconomic triggers of the week, which will lock in the final direction of capital flows through the end of the month.