According to Hyperinsight, a whale address beginning with 0xa314 took a loss on a cross-commodity spread trade after shifting its position to long WTI crude and short Brent following a sharp move higher in oil prices. The paired trade was worth about $15 million in total and appears to have been built on a view that WTI would continue to outperform Brent.
WTI had been leading Brent
Between July 14 and July 23 on Hyperliquid, WTI climbed about 16.4%, while Brent rose about 13.1%. WTI clearly outperformed over that stretch.
The whale then built roughly 91,000 WTI long contracts and expanded its Brent short position to about 100,000 contracts.
The spread trade failed to play out
After geopolitical risks eased, both crude benchmarks moved lower. WTI fell slightly more than Brent, and the spread trade did not deliver. Because the WTI long leg was opened at a relatively higher cost basis, the loss on that side exceeded the gains from the Brent short.
Open positions and PnL
At the time of publication, the address still held about 86,000 WTI long contracts and 90,000 Brent short contracts. The combined value of the two legs was about $15.1464 million.
- Floating loss on WTI longs: about $611,600
- Floating profit on Brent shorts: about $198,000
- Realized loss from prior position reduction: about $45,900
- Funding fees: about $15,000
Taking those items together, the cumulative loss on the WTI-Brent spread trade stood at about $444,400.
Past trading record of the address
Hyperinsight said the address is not focused only on crude oil. Its records show that it initially concentrated on semiconductor and memory-related instruments including NVDA, DRAM, MU and SNDK, and also traded index contracts such as SP500 and XYZ100. The address has a historical profit record of $8.6 million.