Top Traders Across Hyperliquid, Lighter and dYdX Flip 87% Short

Longs Cut to a Third in Three Days

The strongest traders of the past month have turned sharply against the market. A snapshot compiled on Sunday, Oct. 18 shows the top 100 accounts ranked by 30-day returns across Hyperliquid, Lighter and dYdX holding roughly 87% of their combined position value on the short side: about $2.09 billion in shorts against $455 million in longs. Three days earlier the same cohort leaned the other way, carrying $1.336 billion in longs against $1.084 billion in shorts, a 55% long share, at the Friday, Oct. 16 reading. Over that span long exposure fell to roughly a third of its prior level while short exposure grew 2.7 times. The figures come from the Satoshi Index, a daily positioning series maintained by analytics provider Satoshi Note that refreshes hourly from on-chain records and sums the top 100 accounts on each venue, anchored to the earliest of the three snapshots, dYdX's, with the Hyperliquid and Lighter components captured the following morning. Hyperliquid, Lighter and dYdX are all perpetual venues, three of the platforms covered in our best crypto exchanges comparison. Prices were nearly flat between the two readings: Hyperliquid marks had Bitcoin (BTC) at $82,410 on Oct. 16 and $82,250 on Oct. 18, Ethereum (ETH) easing from $2,444 to $2,411, HYPE, Hyperliquid's native token, from $82.10 to $79.00 and Zcash (ZEC) from $1,234 to $1,139. The 24-hour moves at the snapshot were modest, with BTC up 1.0%, ETH up 0.3% and ZEC up 1.6%. Our live monitoring puts BTC near $82,500 at the time of writing, up about 1% over the past 24 hours. Within the 30-day cohort, Bitcoin positions were held by 93 short accounts against 69 long ones, a reversal from the 63% long weighting recorded on Oct. 16.

Seven-Day Shorts Reach 93% of Position Value

The short tilt deepens in the faster leaderboards. Among traders ranked by seven-day performance, shorts hold about 93% of position value, $3.233 billion against $249 million in longs, up from an 80% short share on Oct. 16. That group carries roughly $61 million in unrealized losses, with HYPE positions accounting for about $49 million and BTC for about $38 million, and none of the 20 coins with the largest position values shows a long majority on the seven-day view. The 24-hour cohort flipped too, from 82% long on Oct. 16 to about 65% short, $1.349 billion in shorts against $727 million in longs. When the three-exchange aggregate first ran on Oct. 16, the three periods pointed in different directions; this snapshot is the first in which all three align. By coin, Bitcoin's 24-hour book is split by count, 122 long accounts against 52 short ones, though by value it is nearly even at $281 million against $308 million, and its seven-day book is 92% short at $848 million. Ethereum's seven-day group is 94% short, with $875 million in short value spread across 114 short accounts against 33 long ones. Zcash saw the largest swing: its 24-hour group went from 97% long, 81 accounts to 8, to 82% short as the token fell 7.7% from $1,234 to $1,139, and its 30-day shorts sit on about $17 million of unrealized profit, the largest among tracked coins. Monero (XMR), a privacy-focused altcoin, is the lone long-majority coin in the top 20, 93% long, after rising 4.6% in 24 hours, the biggest gain among the top coins. The compilers flag the limits: leaderboard selection rewards whoever called each period right, a few large books can move the totals, and spot holdings on other venues go uncounted, leaving hedge status unknown.

What a Shared Short Tilt Does Not Prove

Our reading is that the alignment says as much about leaderboard mechanics as about conviction. A month in which HYPE and Zcash sold off fills the 30-day and seven-day ranks with accounts that profited short, so the cohort tilts short by construction, and books this one-sided typically press the funding rate toward levels that pay shorts to hold. The faster signal is pace: the 24-hour group moved from 82% long to 65% short within two days of Zcash's pullback, meaning newly profitable shorts entered the ranking almost immediately. Measured plainly, the distance between the $2.09 billion short book and the $455 million long book now stands near $1.64 billion, against a $252 million long-leaning gap on Oct. 16.