Article author: Token Dispatch, Thejaswini M A Article compilation：Block unicorn
From a forgotten town in the UK, to a street full of crime, to the pinnacle of cryptocurrency's most adventurous trading.
From $7,000 to $25 million on a meme coin that no one was optimistic about.
From a billion-dollar Bitcoin gamble that made Wall Street traders envious and weep.
to watching $100 million evaporate in the final liquidation while the entire crypto world watched in horror.
Meet James Wynn - the trader who embodies every "fallen"'s wildest dreams and worst nightmares.
His story begins with a TRS-80 computer and poverty-bred desires, and culminates in the most transparent trading debacle in crypto history.
The end of the story raises a question that goes to the heart of the industry.
The man known as "moonpig" on Hyperliquid became a great lesson to be learned in the crypto space. Let's dive into the rise and spectacular fall of this fallen king.
James Wynn was not born into a privileged family.
According to his description on social media, he comes from a "forgotten small town" in the UK - a place characterized by high crime rates, drug abuse, alcohol problems and extreme poverty.
"I was born at the bottom," he said.
Image credit: @JamesWynnReal
This isn’t your typical Silicon Valley entrepreneur’s origin story.
No Stanford MBA, no family connections, no venture capital background.
He was just a kid “making ends meet from week to week” who developed a risk appetite that would make even hedge fund managers uneasy.
When you have nothing, betting it all seems like the rational choice. When survival is your bottom line, extreme leverage is just another Tuesday.
Specific details about his early life are intentionally murky—James Wynn has kept his personal identity secret, trading under pseudonyms and wallet addresses. But the thirst he describes is clear in every trade he made later.
By 2020, he had entered the cryptocurrency space.
The first clue came in December 2020, when blockchain investigators discovered that he had received $6,000 worth of Ethereum from Alameda Research, the now-infamous Sam Bankman-Fried’s trading firm.
Image source: @sunil_trades
Whether this money is seed money, service fees, or something else is not clear. The important thing is that this money gave Wynn the initial chips.
Because he is about to turn this chip into extraordinary wealth.
The trade that made James Wynn famous began out of boredom.
In 2023, as he mentioned in his X post, he was browsing micro-cap meme coins on iToken when he stumbled upon something that would change his life: PEPE, inspired by the “Pepe the Frog” internet meme.
The market cap was just $600,000 at the time. Most traders didn’t even bother to pay the gas fee.
But Wynn saw something different.
With an initial capital of about $7,000, Wynn began hoarding PEPE tokens when almost no one was interested. Then he did something that cemented his legend: He publicly published a prediction.
In April 2023, when PEPE hit a market cap of $4.2 million, Wynn claimed it would hit $4.2 billion.
That was a 1,000x prediction. For a meme coin. Based on a cartoon frog.
The crypto world laughed at him. And then PEPE did exactly what Wynn predicted.
By December 2024, PEPE’s market cap was over $10 billion. Wynn’s $7,000 turned into about $25 million — more than a 3,500x return.
Image credit: @Coingecko
But money is only part of the story. The prediction made Wynn a legend in memecoin circles.
He didn’t just get lucky — he made his goal public and achieved it.
The community calls him the "10U Warrior"—a reference to starting small and scaling to millions. His Twitter followers hang on his every word.
That's where things get complicated.
Success in crypto brings followers.
But followers also bring responsibility.
And responsibility has never been Wynn's strong suit.
By 2024, riding on the success of PEPE, Wynn began promoting other tokens. His model is simple: find a micro-cap meme coin, quietly accumulate it, and then promote it publicly.
The ELON incident defines this phase of his career.
In April 2024, Wynn began promoting a token called ELON with the same enthusiasm he had for PEPE. He placed “crazy orders” and galvanized the community. Unbeknownst to his fans, he had quietly accumulated a large amount of assets in multiple wallets.
As the price of ELON soared, Wynn declared that the token had “problems” and announced that he was liquidating his position. The price almost immediately plummeted by 70%.
Image credit: @StarPlatinumSOL
Followers who bought on his recommendation saw their tokens become worthless, while Wynn walked away with a profit.
The move was swift and furious. The community that once held him up as a prophet now denounced him as a manipulator. His reputation, built on the success of PEPE, was shattered.
BabyPepe:Wynn was accused of acquiring 2% of the token supply, promoting it in his Telegram group, and then immediately selling it for a profit of $68,000.
MOONPIG:He allegedly bought 3% of the total supply, pumped up the price through social media, and then dumped his holdings.
WYNN and ELON tokens:Despite his support, both tokens plummeted after launch.
Wynn denied any wrongdoing, claiming he was “only an investor and had no involvement in the development or manipulation of the tokens.” But the damage was done.
The memecoin god has fallen. It’s time to reinvent himself.
In March 2025, James Wynn made a decision that would define his legend: He deposited about $6 million with Hyperliquid, a decentralized perpetual contract exchange.
The platform was a perfect fit for Wynn’s new strategy. High leverage, low fees, and complete transparency on all trades. Unlike centralized exchanges, which hide the movements of big players, every position on Hyperliquid is public.
Wynn wasn’t just trading—he was performing.
Between March and May 23, 2025, he executed 39 leveraged trades with a win rate of 43.59%. But it wasn’t the win rate that caught the eye, it was the size of the trades.
His leverage was no mean feat.
He regularly used 40x leverage on Bitcoin and 10x on Memecoin, with an average leverage of about 22x. That meant that his $55.8 million in collateral controlled a position worth more than $1.25 billion.
By May 10, his profits were impressive.
PEPE long position: $23.8 million unrealized profit
Bitcoin long: $5.4 million unrealized profit
Official Trump: $5.57 million unrealized profit
Fartcoin: $5.15 million unrealized profit
By May 23, his profits peaked at $87 million.
His trades generated huge fees for Hyperliquid - more than $2.3 million in just two months. Some speculated that he was deliberately demonstrating the platform’s capabilities.
“They want me to trade on ByBit, and I’m not going to stop using Hyperliquid even if they give me $1 million a month,” Wynn claimed. “Half the reason I’m public about my trading is because I want Hyperliquid to dominate the exchange market share because the other exchanges are corrupt.”
The transparency is intoxicating. This trader is willing to show every position, every profit, every loss. The crypto world is fascinated.
They are about to witness history—just not the kind Wynn expected.
May 19, 2025. Bitcoin: $103,302.
James Wynn opened a 40x leveraged long position of 5,520 BTC at $103,302 with a liquidation price of $98,294.
The next seven days saw him engage in increasingly desperate trades that ultimately wiped out a fortune and triggered the most public crash in cryptocurrency history.
Days 1-2 (May 19-20):Wynn expanded his position to 7,764 BTC with a notional value of $830 million. His average entry price moved to $105,033 with a liquidation price of $100,330.
Day 3 (May 21): He increased his position to 9,371.71 BTC, a position valued at over $1 billion. The trade had an unrealized gain of $10.71 million, with an average entry price of $108,005. Later that day, he closed his position of 2,139 BTC, realizing a realized profit of $11.92 million.
Day 4 (May 22): Opened a new long position of 10,200 BTC at $108,065. Unrealized profit peaked at $39 million as the price of Bitcoin hit $111,900.
Day 5 (May 23):Turning point. Bitcoin fell 4% to $106,700 after Trump announced a 50% tariff on EU imports. Wynn closed another PEPE position for a profit of $25.18 million and increased his Bitcoin longs to 11,588 BTC at an average entry price of $108,243. Liquidation level: $105,180.
Image credit: @JamesWynnReal
Day 6 (May 24): He closed his position at $107,746, for a loss of $13.39 million. In desperation, he turned to shorting, expanding his short position to 7,967.83 bitcoins, worth $856 million, before closing it at $111,280.
Day 7 (May 26):The final blow. Wynn closed out more than $1 billion worth of short bitcoin positions, losing about $15.87 million in 15 hours.
Total loss over seven days: about $65 million.
His peak profit was as high as $87 million, but it has now fallen to about $27 million. But that number is misleading — because the losses are far from over.
Day 8 (May 30):As Bitcoin fell below $105,000, James Wynn was liquidated, losing 949 Bitcoins, worth $99.3 million.
Image source: @lookonchain
The reality of his Hyperliquid dashboard - a sea of red liquidation marks, tells the story of his complete bankruptcy. The Arkham Intelligence Platform confirmed the scale of the losses:
Image credit: @arkham
His response?
Image credit: @zachxbt
From $87 million in peak profits to complete liquidation. The transparency that once made him famous recorded every step of his bankruptcy for the world to see.
Perhaps the cruelest aspect of Wynn’s downfall was that it became public.
Because Hyperliquid made all trades transparent, other traders could see his exact liquidation levels. What happened next was described by blockchain analyst Lookonchain as a brutal hunt.
Savvy traders deliberately targeted his stop-loss and liquidation levels. The transparency that had built his follower base became a weapon used against him.
Some traders even adopted an “anti-Wynn strategy.” According to on-chain data, one trader made $5.6 million in realized gains in three days by operating opposite to Wynn’s position.
The psychological pressure was enormous. His every move was scrutinized, every loss celebrated by his critics. The hunter became the hunted.
In a moment of clarity, Wynn tried to walk away.
“I have now decided to leave the casino with a $25 million profit,” he posted on May 26. “It has been fun but it is time for me to leave as a winner.”
Five hours later, he was spotted opening a 10x leveraged long position with $20 million in PEPE.
His addiction was too strong. The show must go on.
ZachXBT’s Allegations
As Wynn’s trading losses mounted, blockchain investigator ZachXBT launched a devastating attack on his reputation.
As Wynn warned fans about scam tokens bearing his name, ZachXBT accused him of hypocrisy and said he “gambled with stolen money” on Hyperliquid.
The allegations are specific and damning.
Alameda Connection:ZachXBT suggests Wynn’s trading was funded by questionable sources tied to the FTX/Alameda debacle, citing a December 2020 ETH transfer as evidence.
Pump and Dump Scam:Detailed allegations that Wynn promoted low-cap meme coins and then sold them for profit, causing losses to his fans.
BabyPepe Incident:X user Dylan published a 15-post post claiming that Wynn applied for and received a private allocation of BabyPepe tokens, publicly promoted them, and then immediately sold them while cutting ties with the development team.
FTX creditor activist Sunil Kavuri put it bluntly: "James Wynn's trading is like Alameda on steroids, as he was likely a trader there."
Wynn denied wrongdoing but did not offer any detailed rebuttal of the specific allegations. The damage to his reputation is severe and permanent.
James Wynn represents the double-edged sword of crypto—both a prophet and a cautionary tale, embodying all that is great and awful about our industry.
The Good:Wynn proved that true insight still matters in crypto. His P/E calls were not born of luck, but of research, conviction, and the courage to act when others wouldn’t. He proved that eager outsiders can outperform institutional investors with resources. . His radical transparency challenged an industry built on opacity, showing retail investors how whale-sized positions work in real time.
The Bad:Wynn’s transformation from trader to influencer exposed the most toxic dynamic in crypto—the monetization of fans. His alleged pump-and-dump scheme reveals how easily market insight can turn into market manipulation when the audience becomes the source of exit liquidity. His $100 million liquidation proves that even real skill becomes irrelevant when ego overrides risk management.
We have created an ecosystem where social media followers equate to financial credibility, transparency becomes performance art, and extreme risk-taking is repackaged as “Generation Alpha.” His destruction was live-streamed to nearly a million followers, who confuse gambling addiction with trading genius.
The deeper question is whether crypto’s transparency brings accountability or fragility. While traditional finance hides institutional failures behind closed doors, crypto streams them live in 4K resolution with live commentary. This isn’t progress — it’s more like voyeurism masquerading as innovation.
Wynn's story forces us to reflect: Are we building a financial system that rewards skill and innovation, or have we simply created the world's most sophisticated casino, where the house always wins and the players always perform?
The fallen king fell, but the kingdom that created him is growing stronger.
So are we now looking forward to a comeback?
Image source: @JamesWynnReal
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