I saw this dude's tweets and I'm curious what you all think:
James Wynn, a crypto trader using a fake name, shot to fame by turning tiny bets on meme coins into huge returns, then he took that success to make huge trades in perpetual futures on Hyperliquid. His game plan? Go for high leverage, like 40×, on big positions in Bitcoin and meme coins.
At his peak on Hyperliquid, Wynn’s Bitcoin positions were over $1 billion in notional value, playing with a super thin margin and a lot of bravado. When Bitcoin dropped under $105K, he got wrecked with a cascade of liquidations, losing around 949 BTC, which is like a $99 million hit.
In the months after, he faced liquidation 45 times.
Just last week, he got liquidated 12 times in 12 hours.
At one point, he had an unrealized profit of $66K, but instead of cashing out, he decided to pump up the leverage even more.
Now, he’s sitting on a balance of $6,010.
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Here’s his tweet from October 28 when Bitcoin dipped below 100K:
"It’s just a 32% drop to $77K for $BTC.
Been through these cycles before.
And we’re coming off a 650% rally in Bitcoin.
In my opinion, this would be a really healthy correction, it would flush out the over-leveraged longs and max fear would hit the fear and greed index.
Those who are smartly diversified and positioned will survive."
- Wynn
I'm not sure who is the bigger idiot here, this guy you talk about or the companies that keep allowing him to trade on leverage? They must be milking him. I don't understand how he is funding these bets but it just looks like he is doing an alternative form of gambling. The term liquidation loses all meaning when the guy can go through it 45 times, surely he is only placing fractions of his assets on at a time, because most people tend to get wiped out after one or two liquidations. You mention he had a $1 billion notional amount of bitcoin, losing $99 million instead and then talk about $66k unrealized profit? The numbers don't make any sense unless he had an insignificantly tiny range he could profit in. There's no point trying to glorify this and he is clearly deluded judging by the final sentence of the quote you attribute to him "correctly diversified" - there's no such thing when you have tunnel vision on one asset class.
It seems more like bait to try and catch people who think they'll get rich with leveraged day trading. This is only good for the brokers who pocket thousands of dollars from these greedy people who are so addicted to trading that they seem like hard drug users... very few people do well in day trading, most lose money, you win by the spoonful and lose by the bucketful.
People should have some sense to understand that day trading, especially in futures and margins, is not for everyone because most people can't manage their trades properly and eventually lose money. Only those who either have too much knowledge and experience or those who have very big capitals can actually survive in this market if they do it carefully. Money alone can't save you from losses, but if you have at least some knowledge and then a good amount of money, you can always make some money from the market even if all your trades don't work in your favour.
Those who get into futures without thinking about the possible consequences will always have a hard time. When you are getting into a market, you should know the potential risks you are going to deal with, and then you should know whether you can handle those risks or not, because if you can't handle them, then you are basically wasting your hard-earned money since you won't be able to make any money from this type of trading. It's better to stick to spot trading.
Someone's fortune rose to $1 billion and the person kept on trading? Like what exactly is the person looking for to achieve at the end of the day. Like was he trying to climb up the ladder of billionaires rankings. I don't know why some people won't ever take control of their greed and be satisfied with how far they have come. How many people get to make $1 billion in their entire lifetime, yet someone made it and blew it away just like that. I really find this story hard to believe. Like even when he was on a losing streak, he kept playing for 45 straight times, that's crazy. That must be worse than gambling addiction.
Or, have you thought about the fact that he could be having some other stash of BTC hidden away from public knowledge and what he is playing around with is just disposable funds. Maybe also some PR for the trading platforms, giving the impression to many users out there that they can actually also make a kill by opening high leverage positions?
I mean, the guy is trending all over crypto twitter and media, so great advertisement to encourage newbies to enter the game.
That happens for very few peeps who are very lucky enough to have such gains then overestimated themselves that they can do this and that. In the end, they get liquidated and crash back to the bottom, simply put, too greedy.
Good thing if they actually learn their lesson from it and try again with a better mindset.
I'm sure there's more to this than what you can read in this account's tweets. But whatever the real score is behind this James Wynn, I hope people, especially his followers--which is in the hundreds of thousands--won't just blindly follow his trade calls.
He's been right; he's been wrong. There are times when he's profitable. There are time when he losses. Any trader, good or bad, will have that track record. The bottom line, however, is that timing the market is risky. Especially when you're playing with leverage, you'll most likely end up negative.
OP, actually, do you seriously believe that there was some dude from the street who played with a billion dollars? For whom is it so easy to lose a lot of money? In fact, it has long been known about what could be hidden behind this epic story of the "great trader": here
His wealth never touched $1 billion; the figure reflected his leveraged exposure. On roughly 40× margin, his real stake was only a fraction of that still enormous by any measure.
What is he supposed to do? He should quit and go home spend the money and take some baddies. He made a choice, not a smart one and made a mistake which can happen to anyone.
Problems with meme traders is that they think luck can happen to you many times and from what I suffered in meme coin, I will not advice anyone to do it even if I see other people making juicy profits. It takes alot of search to see which meme coin is going to pump and if the one you see finally pump, pack your bags and go home because it might not pump again, some people people will be stuck in that coin until everything goes back to zero.
I've heard stories about people, who became millionaires overnight via memecoin trading, but lost it all because of their gambling addiction(memecoin trading is actual gambling). When you get huge profits is a very short time, you start to think that your luck and fortune will continue forever and you become extremely greedy. Maybe this guy can afford to lose lots of money and maybe he has a very high risk tolerance. Or maybe some forum members here are right and he is a fake persona. A marketing trick made by a crypto trading platform to hook more traders into leverage trading. However, this option seems unrealistic, because he lost money and his leverage positions were liquidated more than once.
The name James Wynn has come up a few times recently, i am certain this isn't the first time i am hearing about him and the excessive risk he takes when trading. There is no denying the fact that the risk he takes do pay off for him sometimes, but just as you can make a lot of money trading with very high leverage, you could also lose a whole lot more, the more reason why you shouldn't do it and why you should never copy what popular traders like this do.
If the money comes fast, it might go fast as well. It has seen very often that people who get rich quickly either turn out to loose everything eventually or start spending money on unwanted things which only results in spoiling their health.
Earning money is not that easy and if we get the money that easily than we will not really understand the importance of money and will spend on unwanted things and will not even care about how much bank balance we have remaining. Usually in gambling I have seen people win millions overnight but the next day they will end up selling everything and even selling their assets just to take another risk of winning big.
I might feel bad for him but I think he himself will not feel bad for himself. He has lost a big amount and even after losing a major chunk, he still continued risking his entire balance so I do not think this is the only trading account he might have. He will be having a few other accounts with millions in them so he just took a bet of risking this one and it might not even affect his net-worth. He will already be sitting on millions of dollars which he made from the meme-coin bet. He still could have thought of going slow and make gradual profits instead of risking it all.
If I was in his place, I would have focused on maybe 10% to 20% monthly gains on that account and would have simply made those gains as it is not that difficult when it comes to cryptos to safely make 20% a month with minimum risk. Even 20% profit will be huge in number considering his total trading volume.
The man who won and lost it all is that man with low mentality, a man with our vision, a man who has decided to settle for less , a man who life does not have a meaning.
Reason: in Africa we believe that if a man remembers where his coming from then he will know where his headed. It's only but a foolish man that after many years of positive impacts and will go back to nothing because at your breakthrough first you will consider continuation that is employ the mindset of progressiveness by having a progressive mindset then the possible idea to keep up will be deposited in you and you start acting immediately with the fear of not losing your labour guiding you aright
Crazy story, OP. But Im kinda wonderinghow did he survive so many liquidations before finally losing it all? Are platforms like Hyperliquid just that lenient with margin calls? Also, is there a lesson in his tweet about healthy corrections, or is that just trader ego talking?
He made the money through trading, so what did you expect. He will continue trading because he believes he is a pro and knows the in and out of trading. This is how people who take trading as a job will end up losing everything they have because after making huge profits, they'll continue trading. They forget that no matter how lucky or skillful you are in trading, you will run at loss in the long run.