Even top traders are down $45.8M? One day and one month tell completely different stories

Are the traders who made the biggest returns still making money right now?

We looked at the open positions of the top-return traders, and the result was not what you would expect.

The positions held by the top 1-day traders currently show an unrealized gain of $21.4M. The positions held by the top 30-day traders, on the other hand, show an unrealized loss of $45.8M.

What makes it interesting is that even the 30-day group, which is losing overall, is in profit on more than half of its positions.

How does that happen?

We went through the numbers on Satoshi Note's Satoshi Index.

1. One day: $21.4M up. One month: $45.8M down

The Satoshi Index shows the open positions of top-return traders on four exchanges: Hyperliquid, Lighter, dYdX and Pacifica.

Returns are measured over three windows, 1 day, 7 days and 30 days, and each window has its own set of top accounts.

As of 07:38 KST on October 28, the combined unrealized P&L of each group looked like this.

Unrealized P&L is the gain or loss on an open position if it were valued at today's price. The position has not been closed, so nothing is locked in yet.

There is something odd in the table, though.

56% of the 30-day group's positions are in profit, yet the total is a $45.8M loss.

The reason is that the gains and the losses are not the same size.

Add up the gains on the 30-day group's winning positions and you get about $146.0M. Add up the losses on the losing positions and you get about $191.8M.

More positions are winning than losing, but the losing ones are losing more money, so the total ends up negative.

How many positions are in profit and how much money the whole book is making are two different questions.

2. The 1-day group is long, the 30-day group is short

The two groups differ in direction as well as in P&L.

A quick word on long and short first.

• Long: a position that makes money when the price goes up
• Short: a position that makes money when the price goes down

The top 1-day traders hold positions worth about $1,226M in total.

Of that, about $985M is long, 80% of the whole.

The top 30-day traders are the exact opposite.

Of their roughly $3,766M in positions, about $3,436M is short, 91% of the whole.

These are top traders on the same exchanges, but the 1-day group is mostly betting on prices rising while the 7-day and 30-day groups are overwhelmingly betting on prices falling.

One thing to keep in mind is that these are different traders selected over different windows.

It is not that the 1-day traders turned short over time. Which traders appear at the top, and what they hold, changes with the window the return is measured over.

3. HYPE sits at the center of the 30-day losses

So where are the top 30-day traders losing the most?

The coin that stands out is HYPE, the token of the Hyperliquid ecosystem.

The HYPE shorts held by the top 30-day traders carry about $57.8M of unrealized losses.

That is more than the group's entire net loss of $45.8M.

Put simply, take the HYPE shorts out and the rest of the group's positions add up to a gain of about $12M.

HYPE is not alone. Shorts in several major coins are also losing.

Losses on HYPE, BTC, NEAR and ZEC shorts did most of the damage to the overall result.

HYPE also stands out by the number of accounts holding it.

On the 30-day tab, 45 accounts are long HYPE and 108 are short.

More than twice as many accounts are short as long, and those shorts are where the large unrealized losses sit.

None of this says whether HYPE will rise or fall from here. The figures only show the P&L of the positions the top traders were holding at the time of the snapshot.

4. Same coin, the 1-day group wins and the 30-day group loses

One of the more interesting things in this data is that the same coin can produce opposite results.

NEAR is the clearest example.

Among the top 1-day traders, 41 accounts are long NEAR. Those longs are up about $15.3M.

Among the top 30-day traders, 103 accounts are short NEAR. Those shorts are down about $16.3M.

Both groups hold NEAR at the same moment, but one side bet on it rising and is winning, while the other bet on it falling and is losing.

HYPE and ZEC show the same split.

In all three coins the 1-day group's longs are up a lot and the 30-day group's shorts are down a lot.

That does not mean one side is right and the other wrong.

The two groups opened their positions at different times, at different average prices, and in different sizes.

And unrealized P&L is only the picture so far. It will move with the price from here.

5. Losing on the majors, winning elsewhere

The top 30-day traders are not losing on every short.

Shorts in some coins are showing sizeable gains.

The clearest cases are FARTCOIN, STRK, XPL, XRP and CASHCAT.

Every one of these gains comes from short positions.

28 accounts are short FARTCOIN, 33 are short STRK and 45 are short XPL.

Those three coins alone add up to about $19.5M of unrealized gains.

Within the same group of top 30-day traders, shorts in HYPE and BTC are losing heavily while shorts in FARTCOIN and STRK are making money.

In other words, being mostly short was the common thread, but the result depended entirely on which coin was shorted.

6. Why are top-return traders losing right now?

Back to the opening question.

These are traders with high returns. Why are their current positions underwater?

Because past return and current unrealized P&L are two different measures.

The Satoshi Index selects its top accounts on return over a fixed window: 1 day, 7 days or 30 days.

The unrealized P&L in this piece is something else: the value of what those accounts hold today, at today's price.

A trader who made a lot of money over many trades last month can still be losing on the positions they opened since.

The reverse is also true. A big unrealized gain today does not mean the whole month went well.

This snapshot shows that gap clearly.

The top 1-day traders are mostly long and are sitting on gains.

The top 30-day traders are mostly short, and a few large losing shorts have pushed the whole group into the red.

It is also worth noting that more than half of all positions are in profit.

On the 30-day tab, about 56% of positions are winning, yet the money adds up to a $45.8M loss.

How many positions are winning and how much the book is making or losing overall do not have to agree.

Closing — same market, different results

Three things stood out in this Satoshi Index snapshot.

First, the top 1-day traders are up $21.4M on their open positions, while the top 30-day traders are down $45.8M.

Second, the 1-day group is built around longs and the 30-day group around shorts.

Third, 56% of the 30-day group's positions are in profit, but large losses in a few coins, HYPE above all, make the total negative.

In HYPE, NEAR and ZEC in particular, the 1-day traders and the 30-day traders are on opposite sides at the same moment, with opposite results.

The data shows that "top-return trader" is one label covering very different books, depending on the window, the coins held and the direction taken.

FAQ

If they are top-return traders, why are they losing now?

Top traders are selected on return already banked over the past 1, 7 or 30 days. The unrealized P&L on what they hold now is not part of that return. The 30-day traders were holding many large shorts, and the losses on HYPE, BTC, NEAR and ZEC shorts among them pushed the total to a $45.8M loss.

Which is right, the 1-day tab or the 30-day tab?

They are different traders. The 1-day group is yesterday's winners, so it is heavy in longs on coins that are rising. The 30-day group is the month's winners, so it is heavy in shorts. This piece does not say which is right. It only shows that the same coins sit on opposite sides of the two tabs.

Where can I see these numbers myself?

On the Satoshi Index (satoshinote.io/traders), every account row on a coin page shows its unrealized P&L. The period buttons switch between 1 day, 7 days and 30 days. No login is needed and the data refreshes every 30 minutes (dYdX every 3 hours).

Satoshi Index

Satoshi Note's Satoshi Index shows the positions of top traders on four exchanges, Hyperliquid, Lighter, dYdX and Pacifica, in one place.

You can see what the top traders of each window hold, how much is long versus short, and the unrealized P&L of every position.

No login required.

https://satoshinote.io/traders

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Data as of October 28, 2026, 07:38 KST (22:38 UTC October 27). Positions of the top accounts in each window on the four exchanges were summed. Unrealized P&L is not locked in and will change with the market price and the time of the snapshot. Exchanges may calculate unrealized P&L differently. This content is provided for information about market data and does not recommend any coin or position.