Trader turns $125,000 into $43m on Ethereum

An unknown trader booked a 55-fold return on the second-largest cryptocurrency, according to Lookonchain.

This legendary trader has closed all 66,749 $ETH($303M) longs, locking in a profit of $6.86M(55x)!

Starting with only $125K, his total account equity peaked at over $43M(a 344x return), but now stands at $6.99M(a 55x return) after closing.https://t.co/E0iU5Pk3Q6 pic.twitter.com/NHMicKo6b3

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) August 18, 2025

In May the trader transferred $125,000 to the decentralised exchange Hyperliquid. Over four months he opened long positions and “reinvested every dollar”. At one point his portfolio’s value reached $303m.

On August 18, after an Ethereum pullback, the market participant closed 66,749 longs and realised $6.86m in profit. At the peak, total account equity exceeded $43m.

Over the past 24 hours ether fell 4.6%, according to CoinGecko. At the time of writing the asset was trading at $4,328.

Where next for Ethereum’s price?

According to the trader known as Cipher X, if the price of the second-largest cryptocurrency dips to $4,200, $2bn of long positions could be at risk.

🚨 LIQUIDATION WARNING

• Over $2 Billion in longs could be liquidated if $ETH dips to $4,200

• That’s a massive liquidation cluster waiting to be triggered

• Breaking this level could spark a cascade of forced selling across exchanges. pic.twitter.com/DK6mmTajti

— Cipher X (@Cipher2X) August 18, 2025

The heaviest concentration of leverage sits just below the current price. On Binance, potential liquidations near the cited level total $52.18m, while on OKX and Bybit they are $21.56m and $23.59m, respectively.

“Breaking this level [$4,200] will trigger a cascade of forced selling across exchanges,” Cipher X stressed.

Analyst Lennaert Snyder noted that Ethereum has secured a weekly close above the key $4,000 resistance. Any move above $3,490 still confirms the uptrend.

$ETH printed a weekly gain of key $4,000 resistance. 👌

What does this mean for Ethereum?

Technically speaking, Everything above $3,490 is a higher-low & keeps the uptrend intact.

Flipping $4,000 into support would be a very bullish retest.

The higher we hold, the stronger. pic.twitter.com/7ZJboocbNt

— Lennaert Snyder (@LennaertSnyder) August 18, 2025

“Flipping $4,000 into support would be a very bullish retest,” he added.

Current support is $4,240–4,190. Resistance sits at $4,550–4,571. Snyder marked $4,780 as the top of the range, noting that a move above would open the way to $5,000.

Institutional interest

As Standard Chartered noted earlier, Ethereum is also supported by steady ETF inflows and demand from corporate treasuries.

In the week of August 9–15, ether-based ETFs attracted a record $2.8bn. Trading in these products topped $17bn—an all-time high.

“Damn, [Ethereum] really woke up in July. It’s like it slept for 11 months and then crammed a year’s activity into six weeks,” Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas said.

Meanwhile, public companies have accumulated more than 4m ETH worth $17.6bn—3.38% of the total supply of the cryptocurrency.

On August 18, BitMine Immersion reported that it bought 373,000 ETH over the week, taking its balance to 1.52m coins worth $6.5bn. The firm ranks first among Ethereum treasuries and second globally, behind only Strategy, which holds 628,946 BTC worth $74bn.

“We still believe that Ethereum will become one of the key macro investments over the next 10–15 years. The move of Wall Street and AI to blockchain should lead to a large-scale transformation of the modern financial system. And the main part of this process is taking place precisely in the ecosystem of the second-largest cryptocurrency,” said BitMine chairman Tom Lee.

The trend toward corporate crypto treasuries has sparked debate in the community. Supporters argue that such structures raise the ecosystem’s profile and build long-term value in the assets companies accumulate. Critics, for their part, point to the risk of conflicts of interest.