For the past two months, major traders on Hyperliquid have been accumulating long positions in bitcoin, and the price trend is now beginning to reflect their strategy. According to Glassnode data, the overall position of whales on Hyperliquid, a blockchain-based perpetual futures exchange, shifted from net short to net long in early March and has remained so, with the long bias intensifying throughout April.
This shift has coincided with bitcoin's gradual rise from the mid-$60,000 range in February to nearly reaching $80,000 earlier this week. Hyperliquid has become the preferred platform for large traders over the past year, and a sustained long bias from this group often precedes spot bitcoin price movements by days or weeks.
The early March shift to net long preceded the recovery from the mid-$60,000s, and the current positioning is the most aggressively long on record. The seven-day funding rate for bitcoin perpetual swaps across major exchanges is -0.13%, indicating that shorts are paying longs to maintain their positions.
This negative funding has persisted for approximately 47 consecutive days, one of the longest periods of bearish derivatives positioning on record. The combination of sustained negative funding and aggressive long positioning by Hyperliquid whales creates a technical setup that can lead to short squeezes when spot prices surge. Meanwhile, in traditional finance, the S&P 500 closed at a record high on Friday, marking its longest weekly advance since 2024. The weekend's scheduled talks between Iran and the US did not take place, and developments such as the cancellation of the US delegation's trip to Islamabad and the conclusion of the Justice Department's probe into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell may impact the Hyperliquid long positions in the coming hours and days.