Abraxas Capital bought 13,000 ETH worth $32.39 million on Sept. 8 to offset a growing Hyperliquid short. The London firm's short now stands at 141,180 ETH, or about $353.27 million, and it keeps adding spot instead of closing the position.
Abraxas Capital bought 13,000 ETH in the spot market for about $32.39 million, an implied price near $2,491 per coin. The same wallets carry a short position of 141,180 ETH on Hyperliquid, worth roughly $353.27 million.
A market-neutral book, not a bearish bet
The fund holds both legs at once. Spot purchases exist to blunt the pain if the short goes the wrong way, and a market-neutral book pairs short derivatives exposure against separate holdings to earn the spread between them rather than bet on direction. On venues such as Hyperliquid, that spread often comes from funding payments, which shorts collect whenever traders crowd the long side. A third of a billion dollars in short exposure reads as bearish at first glance, but the hedging behavior argues against that.
The position has grown since August
In late August, Abraxas built a $783 million Hyperliquid short and hedged it by withdrawing 73,872 ETH, worth about $173.17 million, from Binance over four days. At that point, Fasanara Capital and Wintermute ran the same playbook, holding short positions of 138,569 ETH and 3,425 BTC respectively, valued near $338 million and $265 million. Set against that August snapshot, Tuesday's disclosure shows an ether short that has grown rather than unwound. Neither leg has been abandoned through several weeks of chop.
What could still go wrong
Market-neutral does not mean risk-free. Basis risk is the first failure mode: a hedge only works if spot and perpetual prices move together, and they can diverge sharply during violent swings, exactly when the protection is needed most. Funding is the second — if crowded shorts flip the funding rate negative, the position stops earning carry and starts paying it. Leverage on the venue itself is the third: Hyperliquid has produced repeated blowups in 2026, including a 23x leveraged ETH short of about $100 million that sat less than 2% from its liquidation price.
Ether is currently trading near $2,480, inside the range it has held for weeks. Meanwhile, bitcoin's price has stalled below $80,000 ahead of U.S. inflation data. Flat tape is the environment carry trades are built for.
Source: Bitcoin News
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