Selling monkeys to survive finally pays off: Machi Big Brother turns $150K into $12.72M in three days

Original author: angelilu, Foresight News

As the market recovery tide rolls in, the undercurrents on-chain had already been churning into towering waves. Machi Big Brother has once again become the protagonist of on-chain public discourse.

Over the past ten months, this crypto whale has been knocked underwater by nearly every surge, his track record of sustained losses reading like a heavy report card. But in last week's one-sided market move, leveraging a mere $150,000 in principal, he rolled it into a $12.72 million long position within three days through extreme leverage, netting a single-trade profit of $12.5 million — an 84x return on his principal.

As of 18:00 on August 24, the total assets in the machibigbrother.eth account on his Hyperliquid address stood at $10.07 million, backed by a long position of $124 million. Leverage hangs by a thread, positions weigh like a hammer — this one man's paper gains and losses are precisely a concentrated slice of current market sentiment, liquidity battles, and risk appetite. On-chain numbers don't lie; they write both the frenzy and the sobriety directly into the position figures.

Current Positions: $10 Million Propping Up $133 Million

Different analysts' figures vary slightly. According to analyst Ember's data, Machi Big Brother accumulated losses of $35 million from going long on ETH over the past 10 months, which narrowed to approximately $24 million after this round of profits.

Real-time data from HypurrScan on-chain gives a clearer picture of his current position composition (data sampled at 18:00 on August 24, 2026):

The four positions total $123.72 million, with overall unrealized profit of approximately $1.435 million at current prices. But breaking it down: HYPE, BTC, and PUMP have all fallen below their breakeven prices, with only ETH still 2.9% above its breakeven. All the profit is actually being carried by the ETH position (unrealized profit of approximately $2.36 million), while the other three positions collectively show an unrealized loss of $920,000.

Additionally, to maintain these four long positions, he has already paid approximately $256,000 in funding fees — the carrying cost of perpetual contracts, deducted every hour regardless of price direction. The longer positions are held, the more gets deducted.

The most critical factor is the "liquidation price." Once the price falls to this level, the system will automatically sell his positions to stop losses without his consent. The tightest of the four is ETH — $2,229, roughly 10% from the current price. And ETH alone accounts for 59% of his total position size — that is the lifeline of the entire account.

Converted to leverage multiples: $9.44 million in equity propping up $123.72 million in positions, for an overall leverage of approximately 13.1x. This means if ETH drops from $2,463 to $2,229 — a $234 decline — the $12.5 million earned in those three days, along with his original principal, goes to zero.

Strategy Unchanged, Risk Remains

It's important to note that Machi Big Brother's profit this time was again built through a "pyramiding" approach — which means opening a leveraged position and, instead of withdrawing unrealized profits, letting them directly serve as additional margin to automatically support a larger position. As the price rises further, the position expands further, compounding in this manner.

Its mathematical signature is — exponential when winning, one-shot when losing. Because every addition is built on the previous unrealized profit, if the market reverses, what gets wiped out isn't just the principal but all the accumulated profits on top — simultaneously. Turning $150,000 into $11.15 million requires multiple consecutive correct calls; turning $11.15 million back into $150,000 theoretically takes just one.

Last week's rebound in ETH from the bottom happened to provide the ideal environment for this structure: one-sided, continuous, and without pullbacks.

Although this operation has brought him $11 million in unrealized profit, don't forget that as the "on-chain liquidation champion," Machi Big Brother has repeatedly seen substantial profits rapidly turn into massive losses. In mid-September 2025, his account peaked at nearly $60 million (with unrealized profits exceeding $44–45 million). Then, during the market crash on October 11, his XPL and ETH long positions were liquidated, swinging from approximately $15 million in profit to losses exceeding $11 million — profits evaporating in an instant.

His trading style is characterized by high leverage (often 25x–40x), extreme bullish bias, high win rate but extremely poor risk-reward ratio, and adding margin / topping up positions on losses rather than cutting losses — resulting in "small wins, big losses" and frequent liquidations.

In November 2025, Lookonchain monitored that he was forcibly liquidated 71 times in a single month on Hyperliquid, ranking first across the entire network.

Currently, his historical cumulative losses remain substantial, and his trading discipline issues have not fundamentally changed. On-chain data is transparent, but the volatility is fierce.

The Two Weeks of Selling Apes to Cover Margin

One highlight of this story is the aura that Machi Big Brother himself carries, while another highlight tells the tale of turning small capital into a massive position. But rewind two weeks, and he was selling Bored Apes one by one:

On August 5, he sold BAYC #5670 for 9 ETH — purchased over three years ago at a cost of 84.99 ETH, a loss of 89.4%.

On August 13, he sold BAYC #5715 for 8.3 ETH, approximately $15,500; the original cost was 34.17 ETH, approximately $64,600 — a loss of 75.7%.

This was his daily routine in the first half of August.

The fire sale of BAYC can be traced back even further. According to Lookonchain's data, in June he sold 34 BAYC at a loss, receiving approximately 326 ETH but suffering an overall loss of about 399 ETH — primarily to add margin to his highly leveraged ETH long positions on Hyperliquid and to avoid or delay liquidation. The community jokingly remarked that he was "keeping himself alive by selling monkeys."

As of writing, according to OpenSea data, he holds 4,357 NFT items, but the value of his NFT holdings has dwindled to just $3.17 million — including 128 BAYC (approximately $2.5 million) and 102 MAYC (approximately $288,000). By comparison, at his peak, he held as many as three hundred BAYC.