For two months, the largest traders on Hyperliquid have been accumulating a long position in bitcoin, and the price chart is beginning to reflect this trend. According to Glassnode data, the whale positioning on Hyperliquid, a blockchain-based perpetual futures exchange, shifted from a net short to a net long position in early March and has remained long since then, with the long bias growing stronger throughout April. This shift coincides with bitcoin's gradual increase from the mid-$60,000 range in February to nearly $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 tends to precede spot bitcoin price movements by days or weeks rather than follow them.
The switch to a net long position in early March preceded the recovery from the mid-$60,000 range, and the current positioning is the most aggressively long it has been in the dataset. Meanwhile, the seven-day bitcoin perpetual swap funding rate across major exchanges is -0.13% according to Coinglass, 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 from Hyperliquid whales creates a technical setup that can lead to short squeezes when spot prices rise. In traditional finance, the S&P 500 reached a record high on Friday, marking its longest weekly gain since 2024. In other news, the weekend's scheduled talks between Iran and the US in Pakistan did not take place, and Treasury yields fell after the Justice Department closed its investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, potentially paving the way for Kevin Warsh's confirmation as the next Fed leader.
The impact of these developments on Hyperliquid's long positions will become clearer in the coming hours and days.