Timing is everything in leveraged trading. For the wallet known as 0xc3ed, the difference between a standout run and a $32.5 million wipeout came down to a directional call that went catastrophically wrong.

On September 22, on-chain tracker Lookonchain flagged that address 0xc3ed57a7a8fa374af47eba5dd713bc2946f800dd had been liquidated four separate times in a 14-hour window, dropping 375.8 Bitcoin in short positions as Bitcoin's price climbed sharply into the $85,000 to $87,000 range. A short position profits when prices fall, so every leg higher in the market worked directly against the trade.

Four Liquidations in One Session

The trades were executed on a perpetual futures platform tracked by hypurrscan.io, where leverage amplifies both gains and losses. When Bitcoin pushed higher instead of lower, the short positions began unwinding one after another.

Liquidation is not a discretionary exit. On leveraged derivatives, a position is force-closed automatically once the margin behind it no longer covers potential losses — a mechanism that protects the platform from uncompensated risk, but one that takes the exit decision out of the trader's hands at precisely the moment it hurts most.

Each successive liquidation suggests the trader attempted to reload and re-enter the short, doubling down on the directional bet. Bitcoin continued rising regardless.

The total damage came to 375.8 BTC, worth roughly $32.55 million at the prices prevailing during that window. After all four liquidations cleared, the account held approximately $1.4 million.

The Twist: The Same Trader Had a Winning Streak

In early September, the same address ran four consecutive long positions on Bitcoin with a perfect win rate. Four trades, four wins, $9.26 million in realized profits. Longs profit as prices rise, so the September run and the later collapse were the same directional bet pointed in opposite directions — first riding the market up, then wagering against it. Because on-chain activity is publicly visible, observers were able to tie both episodes to a single address, a level of traceability conventional brokerage accounts do not offer.

The short squeeze dynamic that drove these liquidations is a well-documented phenomenon in crypto perpetuals. When a large short position sits at a predictable liquidation price, market makers and algorithmic traders are incentivized to push the price toward that level. The resulting liquidation then provides fresh buying pressure, which can push prices higher still, liquidating the next short, and so on. Four liquidations in 14 hours fits that pattern almost exactly.

What Perpetual Futures Do to Traders

Perpetual futures, unlike traditional futures contracts, never expire. A trader can hold a leveraged position indefinitely, as long as the margin holds up. To keep contract prices tethered to the spot market, perpetuals rely on periodic funding payments exchanged between long and short holders — a running cost or credit that shifts with market positioning and accumulates the longer a leveraged trade stays open.

Platforms that track these positions, including hypurrscan.io and Lookonchain, have become important tools for market watchers precisely because large leveraged positions are visible on-chain and can signal where volatility is likely to emerge.

The retained $1.4 million suggests the trader was not entirely wiped out. The prior $9.26 million in profits reflects genuine skill. The $32.55 million loss shows that skill and leverage together are only as durable as the next price move. Whether 0xc3ed steps back into the market — and on which side — is now a question anyone watching the address on-chain can follow in real time.