Wintermute Carries Roughly $160M in Crypto Shorts as Broad Market Rallies

ChainThink, citing TradingBeats data as of Aug. 24, said 66 of 76 major perpetual contracts on Hyperliquid with more than $1 million in trading volume over the past 24 hours posted gains. That represents about 86.8% of the sample, with a median rise of roughly 4.6%. BTC advanced about 1.8% and ETH gained around 2.7%, while some altcoins jumped more than 10%. As prices moved higher across the board, three market-maker addresses tagged as Wintermute, Cumberland and Auros were forced to take down sizable sell flow. Together they held about $230 million in crypto short exposure versus roughly $9.93 million in longs, implying a net short position near $220 million and an unrealized loss of approximately $6.92 million. Wintermute accounted for 61 short positions from a single address worth around $163 million. Its combined shorts in ETH, BTC, SOL and HYPE were close to $100 million. Cumberland and Auros held short positions of about $20.63 million and $46.87 million, respectively. Wintermute currently has 1,718 crypto limit orders outstanding, including 854 sell orders and 864 buy orders, spanning 77 contracts. It is quoting both sides in 74 of those contracts. Auros is also posting bids and offers across most quotes, consistent with a standard market-making setup. The report noted that persistent aggressive buying has been lifting offers, leaving market makers to sell passively and increasing the short skew in their perpetual inventory. As of publication, Wintermute had started steadily covering shorts and trimming net short exposure, a pattern consistent with market-maker inventory rebalancing.