Whale Mk4 Shorts Bitcoin (BTC) and Seven Major Altcoins for $13.1M

A $25 Million NEAR Long Against the Majors

On-chain analytics platform Arkham published research on X on Tuesday that maps the positions of a trader the platform identifies as Mk4, an address it tracks as a crypto whale. The study shows Mk4 carrying a long position in NEAR worth more than $25 million, with roughly $12.15 million in unrealized profit attached to that single bet. The same investor stands on the opposite side of most of the rest of the large-cap market: Arkham reports a short book of about $13.1 million spread across Bitcoin (BTC) and seven major altcoins, with BNB named among the assets covered. A short position is a bet that an asset falls in price, and the trader profits if the position can be closed cheaper than it was opened. Read together, the two legs form a hedged structure. The address keeps full exposure to NEAR's upside while betting that the broader market, Bitcoin included, moves lower, a combination the study presents as a way to profit from the market's decline without giving up the NEAR position. Unrealized profit, as Arkham measures it here, is the gain on an open position at current prices before any exit; the figure moves with the market and can shrink without the trader selling anything. The Bitcoin price of recent sessions is the backdrop this book is built against, since the short leg only pays while the majors stay weak. Arkham labels and tracks notable addresses across chains, and its research posts are one of the main public windows into how these large books sit, a beat our Bitcoin (BTC) hub follows closely. Because the positions are recorded on-chain, the attribution is a reading of public records, not a report from the trader. The research did not state the entry prices of the shorts or the leverage behind them.

The profit side of the long is the part that has moved most. At NEAR's highs two weeks ago, the open position profit stood at about $20.88 million, the figure Arkham shared in the same study. Today's measurement puts it at $12.15 million, a decline of roughly $8.73 million over the two weeks. That is a compression of about 42 percent from the recent peak, and it reflects NEAR's move off those highs rather than any closed trade: nothing in the record shows the long being reduced or sold. The position still clears $12 million in unrealized gain, which keeps it one of the more profitable single bets an on-chain observer can point to right now. The study does not give the profit or loss on the short leg. The size of the short book, $13.1 million, and the assets it covers are stated; whether those positions are currently in profit is not. That gap leaves the net result of the hedged structure open. If the broader market fell while NEAR cooled from its highs, the shorts would have earned back part of what the long gave up, though the research puts no number on that side of the book. What the figures do establish is which leg carries the risk. The trade is built to work while NEAR outperforms the assets on the short side, and the two-week slide in profit shows how quickly that relative edge can erode. The $8.73 million swing equals about two-thirds of the short book in size, a scale comparison that shows how much weight the NEAR leg carries in the overall result. Arkham re-measures books like this as prices move, so the $12.15 million should be read as a snapshot from Tuesday, not a settled result.

The book reads as a relative-value position rather than a directional one. Mk4 is long the outperformer and short the market, so the payoff depends on NEAR continuing to beat Bitcoin (BTC) and the other majors, not on the market going anywhere in particular. The two-week record bears that out: the long's gain compressed by $8.73 million even with the short side of the book set against a soft market. Traders watching whether that softness holds can follow our separate coverage of spot selling pressure and the levels laid out in our Bitcoin technical analysis. The record ends with Tuesday's study: Arkham reports no position change since publication, and the trader has made no disclosure of their own.