According to BlockBeats on Aug. 3, TradingBeats, formerly Hyperinsight, said whale accounts on Hyperliquid have recently been lowering leverage in MU, SNDK and SKHX. SK Hynix-linked SKHX was the only one of the three where open interest contracted in step with position size.
From 23:00 yesterday to the time of publication, SKHX open interest fell from about $364 million to $321 million, down roughly $43.44 million, or 11.9%. After stripping out the effect of the price decline, the number of contracts held still dropped from about 330,400 to 299,700, a 9.3% decrease.
MU fell about 4.7% over the same period, yet contract holdings increased 4.5% and open interest was broadly unchanged at $172 million. SNDK fell about 4.3%, while contract holdings rose 5.3% and open interest ticked up to $122 million. Among the three, SKHX was the only one showing declines in both dollar OI and contract count, making it the most concentrated risk-off move in the group.
A second visible deleveraging wave
TradingBeats said this was already the second clear deleveraging round in SKHX in recent days. On July 31, when the price rebounded to $1,165.5, open interest dropped sharply from $622 million to $451 million, a single-round contraction of 27.6%.
It has now fallen further to $321 million, another reduction of about $130 million from the previous low, or 28.9%. From the $622 million local peak, SKHX open interest has shrunk by about $301 million in total, a decline of 48.4%, nearly half. Over the same stretch, the SKHX price was down only about 8.2% from $1,165.5, a much smaller move. On TradingBeats' reading, the latest contraction was driven mainly by active position reduction.
Latest price and whale positioning
At the time of publication, SKHX was quoted at $1,070.3, down 5.2% over 24 hours, with trading volume of about $644 million.
In the latest four-hour sample of large whale trades, long positions saw net reductions of about $5.593 million, while short positions posted net reductions of about $795,000.