Boxing champion Andrew Tate's "drop to zero" record: How did he lose 720,000 USD on Hyperliquid?

Written by: Gino Matos

Compiled by: Luffy, Foresight News

Former world boxing champion and billionaire Andrew Tate deposited $727,000 into the cryptocurrency trading platform Hyperliquid over the past year, during which he made no withdrawals. After a series of high-leverage liquidations, his account was wiped out on November 18, with all funds disappearing.

According to Arkham's on-chain ledger records, Tate earned approximately $75,000 in referral commissions by inviting other traders to join the platform, which he also reinvested into trading positions, ultimately facing liquidation as well.

This incident is a typical case of how high leverage, low win rates, and habitual doubling down can turn six-figure funds into a public farce, especially when traders publicly disclose every transaction in real-time on social media.

Tate's trading activity on Hyperliquid has lasted for nearly a year, with the first recorded forced liquidation occurring on December 19, 2024. Arkham's trading history review shows that on that day, his long positions in multiple cryptocurrencies including BTC, ETH, SOL, LINK, HYPE, and PENGU were liquidated simultaneously.

The trading pattern for the next 11 months was already beginning to take shape at that time: using high leverage for directional bets on cryptocurrencies, almost without risk management, and tending to re-enter losing trades with even higher leverage rather than reducing risk exposure.

Ethereum gamble in June

The most publicized collapse occurred on June 10th. Tate posted that he was long on Ethereum at a price of around $2515.90 with 25x leverage, boasting about the scale of the trade and his firm confidence.

A few hours later, this position was liquidated, and the related posts were deleted.

The next day, the on-chain analysis platform Lookonchain released a dashboard screenshot linking a Hyperliquid tracking address to Tate. The data showed that he had conducted a total of 76 transactions, with a win rate of only 35.53%, resulting in a total loss of approximately $583,000.

Such a low win rate means that Tate needs to make the profits from winning trades significantly exceed the losses from losing trades in order to break even, but he has not done this.

Hyperliquid's order book and settlement layer are highly transparent, allowing anyone to monitor relevant addresses to see every entry transaction, every margin call notification, and every liquidation. Furthermore, Tate tends to release related updates before the trading results are announced, which further amplifies the exposure of the events.

September and November: The Final Struggle

In September, Tate once again faced a high-profile loss, as its long position in WLFI was liquidated, resulting in a loss of approximately $67,500.

At that time, reports indicated that Tate attempted to re-enter the trade at a similar price level, resulting in further losses. This pattern repeatedly occurred in the last few weeks of his account's existence.

By November, his funds had significantly shrunk. On November 14, a 40x leveraged Bitcoin long position collapsed, resulting in a loss of about $235,000. Four days later, his account was completely cleared.

The final liquidation occurred around 19:15 Eastern Time on November 18, with Tate's last Bitcoin long position being liquidated near the $90,000 price point.

Arkham's post-analysis shows that throughout the trading cycle, Tate deposited a total of $727,000, did not withdraw any funds, and exhausted the entire balance, including the $75,000 referral earnings.

This recommended yield figure is worth paying attention to: Tate successfully attracted enough traders to join Hyperliquid, thereby obtaining a substantial rebate, but he invested this income into the same type of leveraged position that had already cost him six figures in losses.

This is not only a problem of failing to preserve the principal, but also a failure to realize that there are fatal flaws in the trading strategy itself.

According to Lookonchain's summary, from November 1 to 19, Tate experienced a total of 19 liquidations, making him one of the traders with the highest number of liquidations on the Hyperliquid platform for the month, with the number of forced liquidations during this period only behind Majik Brother and James Wynn.

His final trading records cover mainstream cryptocurrencies such as BTC, ETH, and SOL, as well as several niche tokens, with all trading leverage ratios ranging from 10x to 40x.

The higher the leverage, the smaller the price drop required to trigger a margin call notification. In this month of extreme volatility in the cryptocurrency market, margin call notifications have been particularly frequent.

How high leverage and low win rates consume funds

The mechanism behind the collapse of the Tate account is actually quite simple: high leverage amplifies both gains and losses, and a win rate lower than 40% means that the number of losing trades will exceed the number of winning trades.

In perpetual contracts, a mere 2.5% reverse price fluctuation is enough to trigger liquidation for a position with 40x leverage.

Tate's positions often sit at or above this threshold, which means that even a slight pullback could result in him being forcibly liquidated.

When he re-enters the market with a similar or higher leverage after a forced liquidation, he is essentially repeating the same trade with less capital and the same risk parameters. Over time, this pattern will gradually deplete the funds.

The recommended earnings of $75,000 have exacerbated the severity of the problem. Hyperliquid's referral program pays a certain percentage of rebates to traders based on the trading fees generated by users they invite.

The reason Tate was able to earn this $75,000 is that he brought in enough trading volume (whether from his own trades or from the trades of followers who registered through his referral link) to qualify for the rebate.

But he neither withdrew this rebate nor used it to reduce leverage, but instead invested it into those positions that had been liquidated multiple times.

This decision either reflects his strong belief that the next trade can reverse the trend, or it shows that he completely does not understand how quickly leverage can devour capital when the win rate remains persistently low.

Why the event is publicly staged

Tate is willing to disclose relevant updates before the trading results are announced, turning his personal trading account into a public ledger.

Most traders who collapse due to high leverage tend to handle it quietly. Their liquidation records will be reflected in the exchange's aggregated data but will not be tied to specific identities.

Tate will release entry trade information, mark positions, and sometimes delete evidence after forced liquidation, which will inevitably trigger media reports and on-chain tracking.

Platforms like Arkham and Lookonchain have specifically built tools to track this account because they know that every liquidation triggers views and comments.

The transparency of Hyperliquid makes tracking effortless. Unlike centralized exchanges, the account data of Hyperliquid is not private information; its transaction settlement occurs on-chain, allowing anyone who knows the address to view the transaction history.

Once Lookonchain associates Tate's public identity with a specific Hyperliquid address, this ledger becomes a public spectacle of a “match.”

Every margin call, every re-entry, and every final liquidation are recorded with a timestamp in real-time and archived.

The broader question raised by the Tate incident is: Was the original intention of high-leverage perpetual contract platforms to enable retail investors to profit, or to extract funds from overconfident traders?

Hyperliquid offers up to 50x leverage on certain trading pairs, and will automatically trigger a margin call notification when equity falls below the maintenance margin threshold.

For professional traders with strict risk management, these tools can achieve capital-efficient strategies; but for traders with a low win rate who are accustomed to doubling down, they are no different from a “liquidation machine.”

The collapse of Tate at 727,000 USD will not change Hyperliquid's fee structure or leverage limits, but it does provide a public case study of what happens when high leverage, low win rates, and blind re-entry are combined.

The platform charges trading fees on every position, every re-entry, and every forced liquidation; the referral program pays Tate $75,000 to attract trading volume, which was then recouped through liquidation.

From a business perspective, the operation of this system fully aligns with its original design intention.

For retail traders observing this event, the lessons are more about the structural dynamics of leveraged trading rather than Tate's specific mistakes.

As long as position management and risk management are appropriate, a 35% win rate still has room for survival; however, when combined with 25x leverage and the habit of re-entering losing trades with higher leverage, it becomes deadly.

The transparency of on-chain settlement means that these dynamics can be observed in real time, making personal bankruptcy events either a public education case or public entertainment material.

Tate's account has been wiped out, while Hyperliquid's order book continues to operate normally. $727,000 has vanished, and the recommended earnings are also gone, yet this trading ledger remains publicly visible.

The only thing left is a timestamped record, which warns people: how quickly leverage can devour funds when traders refuse to stop-loss and exit.