Garrett Jin withdraws 35,001 ETH from Binance to fuel $51M ZEC short on Hyperliquid

Garrett Jin is not a man who quietly cuts his losses. The former CEO of BitForex pulled 35,001 ETH from Binance and routed it to Hyperliquid in September 2026, using the funds to deepen an already sizable short position on Zcash.

The move is notable for two reasons: the scale, and the timing. ZEC had been climbing when Jin expanded his position, which now sits at roughly 37,760 ZEC with a notional value of around $51 million.

A short position bleeding in real time

Jin’s ZEC short is currently underwater by more than $25 million in unrealized losses, with ZEC trading near $1,400 at the time of the trade and his liquidation threshold sitting around $2,631.

To put that spread in perspective: ZEC would need to rally roughly 88% from Jin’s entry zone before he gets forcibly liquidated. That’s a wide buffer, but $25 million in paper losses is not a comfortable place to be sitting.

On-chain analysts have been watching Jin’s wallet movements closely for months. A deposit of roughly 577,000 ETH to Binance in May 2026 drew significant attention and flagged Jin as one of the largest individual movers on centralized exchanges this cycle. The current 35,001 ETH withdrawal is, by comparison, a smaller operational move, but directionally consistent: collateral flows from Binance outward, toward active trading positions.

The $250 million loss that didn’t slow him down

Earlier in 2026, Jin closed a long ETH position with a realized loss of approximately $250 million. Jin’s response was to keep trading.

His track record isn’t uniformly grim, though. In late 2025, a major Bitcoin short delivered meaningful profits, demonstrating that his aggressive directional style can work. He also accumulated more than $11 million in cumulative profits from earlier ZEC short positions before his current trade turned against him.

Jin has pushed back on some of the scrutiny by noting that a portion of the funds tracked to his wallets belong to clients rather than himself personally. On-chain data, by its nature, doesn’t distinguish between proprietary capital and client assets, which makes independent verification difficult. The operational link between the entities, however, remains visible in the transaction patterns.

What traders should take from this

The ZEC market is not especially deep by major-asset standards, which makes a $51 million short position a meaningful presence. A trader of Jin’s scale sitting short can suppress price action to a degree, but it also creates a feedback loop risk: if the position moves toward liquidation, covering that short means buying ZEC in size, which accelerates the price move against him.

That dynamic is not unique to Jin, but his public on-chain footprint makes the liquidation math visible to anyone paying attention. When a liquidation level is widely known, markets have a documented tendency to test it. The $2,631 liquidation threshold is not a secret.

For the broader decentralized-exchange ecosystem, Jin’s trading patterns illustrate how large players now move between centralized and decentralized venues. Binance serves as a liquidity reservoir: Jin deposits, accumulates, and withdraws ETH as his margin needs fluctuate. Hyperliquid handles the actual position.

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