Whales Open $71 Million ASTER Short After CZ’s “Buy and Hold” Reveal

Two major crypto whales have opened a combined $71 million short position against ASTER. They made the moves after Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) revealed that he had personally purchased the token.

Whales Bet $71 Million Against ASTER After CZ’s Revelation

CZ made the announcement on X, writing, “Full disclosure. I just bought some Aster today, using my own money, on Binance. I am not a trader.I buy and hold.” The post reignited attention around ASTER. Recently, the Aster team launched a token buyback program that experts said could trigger a price spike.

According to Lookonchain, one whale, using the wallet address 0x9eec…1daab, opened a massive $49.17 million short position on Hyperliquid, a decentralized perpetuals exchange. The position, set with 3x leverage, has since grown to 42.97 million ASTER valued at roughly $52.8 million, with a liquidation price of $2.09.

According to Whale Insider, a second whale, identified by a different wallet (0xBADBB…3eE6), soon followed. A trader made a deposit of 3.8 million USDC to open another short of $18.45 million on Hyperliquid. Combined, both whales hold approximately $71.25 million short on ASTER.

ASTER Surges by 27% on Bullish Binance Sentiment

At the time of writing, TradingView data indicates that the token has risen by 27% over 24 hours, coinciding with CZ’s revelation. Earlier, ASTER rallied 1500% after CZ’s endorsement of the project. His endorsement fueled market curiosity and increased whale activity.

According to CoinGlass data, it turned out that the derivatives volume increased by 186% and reached $3.04 billion. The open interest in the token also rose 70% to $781.86 million, which confirms more leveraged trading.

ASTER long-to-short ratio on Binance stood at 1.90, indicating bullishness among traders. Top traders even displayed greater confidence. Their account ratio and position ratio stood at 1.83 and 2.08, respectively.

Even though whales were significantly shorting the token on Hyperliquid, Binance traders remained net-long. They are hoping that ASTER would continue increasing in price.