Moderna's vaccine data leaked two days early. On Hyperliquid, the biggest short made $377K and the biggest long flipped short
Moderna's stock perpetual on Hyperliquid (xyz:MRNA) fell 20.7% on Oct 22, from 245.64 to 195.26, and traded $92.2M — 5.2 times its normal day. The low was 180.60.
The trigger came two days early. Moderna and Merck's Phase 3 melanoma results were due at the ESMO Congress on Saturday. Instead, according to Bloomberg, the figures appeared on a medical news site on Thursday around 12:30 p.m. New York time (16:30 UTC) and were taken down soon after. The headline number, reported by CNN: the vaccine plus Keytruda cut the risk of the cancer returning or death by 42% versus Keytruda alone. That is roughly what the market already expected; BioPharma Dive notes the earlier Phase 2b trial showed 44%. Moderna's stock had risen more than fivefold this year. It was a classic "sell the news."
On Hyperliquid the slide started before the leak: MRNA slipped from about 241 to 222 between 13:00 and 16:00 UTC. In the first 30 minutes after 16:30, $16.2M traded and the price fell to about 197.
Yesterday we named four wallets. Here is what happened to them
| Wallet | Position before | What it did | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0x325e…9564 | Largest short, $2.95M at 10x, avg 244.81 | Started closing at 12:18 UTC, kept closing on the way down, closed the last $883K at about 187 after the leak | +$377K, now flat |
| 0xfe7c…b7ae | Largest long, $2.5M at 3x, entry 247.94 | Sold all day, then at about 17:00 UTC flipped to a $2.1M short at 188.30 | Long lost $295K; still short $1.29M, down about $100K at 204 |
| 0x2577…4897 | $0.74M short at 10x, liquidation 266.70 | The data sent the price down, not up. Traded in and out all day | About +$171K realized on Oct 22 |
| 0x4e23…20c3 | Liquidated for $4.68M on Oct 21 | Had already left MRNA | Missed the drop |
The shorts were right. The one who held the long cut it into the hole, then turned around and shorted the bottom of the move: 0xfe7c's new short was opened within about $8 of the day's low.
Liquidations stayed small — $341K for the whole day — because the biggest leveraged long had been selling since 08:00 UTC.
What to watch
The full data will still be presented at ESMO on Saturday, Oct 24, at 10:30 a.m. EDT (14:30 UTC), with the Nasdaq closed. As of 02:00 UTC, MRNA is at 203.5, and open interest has halved to $6.2M from $12.0M a day earlier. 0xfe7c's short is liquidated at 260.89.
MRNA whale positions and liquidations on Hyperliquid · Yesterday's story: a $4.7M Moderna short liquidated in one minute
Data: Hyperliquid on-chain fills, liquidations and positions, compiled by CryptoAnimon. Wallet results use realized PnL from fills, before fees. Positions and prices as of about 02:00 UTC, Oct 23.
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