Key highlights:
- Former BitForex CEO Garrett Jin denied any connection to Donald Trump or involvement in insider trading linked to the $4.23 billion BTC-to-ETH swap.
- On-chain investigators had tied Jin to the Hyperliquid whale controlling over 100,000 BTC through linked Ethereum wallets.
- The controversy came to light as major cryptos, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and top 100 tokens, suffer steep losses within minutes.
Amid insider trading accusations, the former CEO of BitForex, Garrett Jin clarified that he has no connection to the Trump family or Donald Trump. Jin, the whale who sold over $4.23 billion worth of BTC for ETH, said this was not insider trading. He clarified that the funds do not belong to him personally, but to his clients, for whom his team operates nodes and provides internal research and analysis services.
Garrett Jin Denies Insider Trading Allegations
Jin suddenly became a centre of a controversy when investigator Eye linked the mysterious Hyperliquid whale, who controls over 100,000 BTC, to Garrett.
It is worth mentioning that BitForex, a now-defunct exchange, was embroiled in a fraud scandal.
In a post on X this Saturday, an on-chain investigator claimed that the whale’s main wallet, ereignis.eth, is linked to another Ethereum Name Service (ENS) identity, garrettjin.eth. This second name, the sleuth noted, was directly linked to @GarrettBullish, which was a verified X account of former BitForex CEO Garrett Jin.
“The ENS name ereignis.eth (which means ‘event’ in German) confirms his link to this wallet, identifying him as the actor behind the large-scale operations on Hyperliquid and Hyperunit,” Eye wrote on X.
Blockchain data further supported the connection. The wallet’s transactions aligned with Jin’s known business activities, including transfers to staking contracts and addresses funded by exchanges he previously worked with, such as Huobi (HTX). It also received and sent funds associated with BitForex-linked addresses and Binance deposits used to open massive positions, one of which included a $735 million Bitcoin short.
Jin’s past adds context to the growing controversy. He led BitForex between 2017 and 2020, a period after which the exchange was accused of falsifying trading volumes and flagged by Japan’s Financial Services Agency for operating without registration.
In 2024, BitForex suffered a $57 million hot wallet breach, froze withdrawals, and shut down after several team members were reportedly detained in China. Hong Kong’s SFC later issued a warning for suspected fraud, and users claimed millions in unrecovered funds.
After BitForex’s downfall, Jin moved on to launch multiple ventures including WaveLabs VC (2020), TanglePay (2021), IotaBee (2022), and GroupFi (2023), though most of these projects have since gone inactive. In 2024, he launched XHash.com, which was an institutional Ethereum staking platform. But investigators now suspect may have been used as an outlet to questionable funds. After these allegations came to light, Jin quietly removed XHash from his social media bio, but it remains visible on his Telegram profile.
Even as the speculations rise, many crypto enthusiasts are not convinced by the findings. Crypto analyst Quinten François urged caution, suggesting the links may be coincidental or intentionally misleading.
“Why would someone have an ENS name pointing directly to their public X handle in wallets connected to alleged manipulation or illicit activity?” François wrote. “It sounds way too simple to be true.”
Meanwhile, the crypto market has bled severely in the past few days. Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, plunged more than 12% following the tariff announcement posted on Trump’s Truth Social account.
Not just Bitcoin and Ethereum, several top-100 “institutional-grade” crypto assets suffered devastating losses within minutes. Cosmos (ATOM) plunged from $4.00 to $0.001, erasing 99.97% of its value. Sui (SUI) fell from $3.40 to $0.56, while Aptos (APT) dropped from $5.00 to $0.75. SEI crashed from $0.28 to $0.07, Chainlink (LINK) was down from $22 to $8, and Cardano (ADA) slipped from $0.80 to $0.30. These weren’t obscure or low-cap tokens, but major projects often promoted by venture capital firms, influencers, and analysts as “safe” investments. In a matter of minutes, not hours or days, over 80% of their combined value was obliterated.
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