Rumors of insider trading dominated social media throughout the weekend as one wallet banked generational wealth in a single trade.
Bitcoin price fell rapidly after President Trump posted plans on Friday to impose 100% tariffs on all Chinese imports effective Nov. 1.
The market recovered on Monday as crypto derivatives reset and spot demand stabilized, while social media advanced theories around a large Bitcoin short that was opened just before the announcement and tied it to a member of the Trump family.
The tariff post hit risk assets across sessions through the weekend, with Bitcoin probing the $105,000 area before retracing to about $115,000 by Monday morning in Europe.
Crypto liquidations over the 24 hours around the drop clustered around $19 billion, with upwards of 1.6 million accounts liquidated.
The rumor set focuses on a large Bitcoin short opened ahead of the tariff post and, in some versions, attributes the trade to Barron Trump. As of publication, there is no public, verifiable exchange or on-chain evidence linking any Trump family member to such a position.
Data that places Barron Trump in the crypto arena is largely concerned with family wealth disclosures and profile pieces, including financial disclosures, Forbes ranking, and prior meme-coin rumor cycles, not documented derivatives activity.
The Big Bitcoin Short
Identified elsewhere as Garret Jin, the trader made headlines on Friday by opening massive short positions on Bitcoin just minutes before President Trump publicly announced the new 100% China tariffs. The trader used the decentralized exchange Hyperliquid, placing short bets on Bitcoin and Ethereum with a notional value exceeding $700 million.
Within hours of the announcement and subsequent price collapse, the trader reportedly netted between $160 million and $200 million in profit. Bitcoin plunged from around $124,000 to as low as $105,000, and Ethereum followed with a double-digit drop. On-chain analytics indicate that most positions were quickly closed to lock in these substantial gains, with the trader briefly leaving about $92 million worth of Bitcoin shorts open post-crash.
The precision timing of these moves, executed just before President Trump’s post, sparked intense speculation in the crypto community about possible insider knowledge, but direct evidence supporting such claims has not surfaced.
Regardless, the profit tally for this trade on Friday stands at roughly $160 – $200M, representing one of the largest and fastest windfalls in recent crypto trading history.
An X account claiming to be Jin posted on Oct. 13, denying any Trump-family connection and framing the short as a macro/technical call amid overbought risk assets and rising US-China tensions.
The account posted, “The fund isn’t mine — it’s my clients’. We run nodes and provide in-house insights for them.” He then replied to Binance Co-Founder Changpeng Zhao, saying,
“Thanks for sharing my personal and private information. To clarify, I have no connection with the Trump family or @DonaldJTrumpJr — this isn’t insider trading.”
Some X users are not convinced.
That gap matters for legal characterizations.
Insider trading in the United States turns on trading on material, nonpublic information obtained or used in breach of a duty.
The misappropriation theory under Rule 10b-5 covers trading on confidential government information when a duty of trust or confidence is breached. The STOCK Act applies to misuse of nonpublic information by federal officials and staff, and accelerates trade disclosures for covered officials, although enforcement pathways differ by office and instrument type.
Bitcoin is treated as a commodity for regulatory purposes, so the Commodity Futures Trading Commission would have jurisdiction over Bitcoin derivatives. The Securities and Exchange Commission has pursued insider-trading cases where the asset at issue is a security.
That mix means any charge set would hinge on proof of access to nonpublic policy timing, evidence that trading occurred on the basis of that information, and records that tie the positions to the individuals in question.
Tariff signaling, leverage rebuilding, and exchange-linked liquidity will likely continue to shape price action and flows over the next two to six weeks.
A base case assumes the White House keeps the 100% tariff plan on track for Nov. 1 with intermittent rhetorical shifts, while China’s policy response evolves.
An escalation case assumes clear retaliatory steps or added U.S. trade measures, while a de-escalation case assumes targeted carve-outs or delay signals. Open interest and funding rates typically rebuild at a slower pace after large liquidation events, and that process can produce choppy ranges while market makers normalize inventories.
Looking into prior episodes, the days after record liquidation clusters often show a second test of stress zones if equities soften and the dollar firms. Exchange stablecoin flows also merit monitoring since net deposits can front-run re-risking and elevate USDT transfers to Binance during stabilization.
To ground the discussion in scenario ranges, the following table frames plausible price corridors into early November, anchored to Monday’s European morning spot level.
| Scenario | Key triggers and assumptions | Illustrative BTC corridor | Plausible drivers to watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Escalation | Clear China retaliation or added U.S. measures, S&P 500 down 5 to 8 percent from Monday, DXY up 1 to 2 points, VIX higher by 5 to 8 vols, open interest contracts another ~5 percent from post-shock levels | 90,000 to 105,000 | Equity gaps lower, negative funding, thin weekend books, second-leg liquidations |
| Base | Status quo jawboning, no fresh measures before Nov. 1, funding converges toward flat, open interest rebuilds gradually | 110,000 to 125,000 | Range trading, stablecoin net deposits to major venues, realized vol above recent averages |
| De-escalation | Carve-outs or delay signals, equities stabilize, dollar softens, funding normalizes positive | 125,000 to 135,000 | OI expansion, spot-led bids, fewer forced sellers |
The liquidations math and the weekend tape reduce the need for a manipulative narrative to explain the move.
The $19 billion liquidation print is among the largest single-day events reported for crypto, and Bitcoin’s share alone, paired with a downdraft in related assets, is consistent with a multi-venue, cross-position flush, with recovery into Monday.
If a single short catalyzed the path, it would still need to be reconciled with observed funding and order book behavior across multiple exchanges, the timing of the tariff post, and the behavior of correlated risk assets.
The cross-market context matters here, because tariff shocks feed through supply chain expectations, rare-earth and tech inputs, and large-cap equity factor moves, and crypto has tended to trade with high beta equity baskets on such days.
The legal frame is forward looking.
If investigators were to pursue the rumor, the core questions would be whether any nonpublic information about the tariff timing and content was accessed in advance, whether a duty of confidentiality was breached, whether trading occurred on the basis of that information, and whether records connect that trading to the individuals named.
In the absence of documentary evidence, the rumor remains a narrative about alignment rather than proof of conduct. Televised commentary earlier this year, as covered by PBS, assessed the probability of legal exposure from tariff posts alone as low, while legislative interest in stricter trading rules for officials advanced in the Senate.
For readers tracking near-term market structure, a compact set of indicators can translate policy noise into positioning signals.
First, open interest across Bitcoin perpetuals relative to seven-day averages, combined with funding rate direction, helps identify whether fresh leverage is chasing rebounds or whether the market is still de-risking. Live panels for these figures are available on CoinGlass.
Second, exchange stablecoin balances and large net deposits, especially into Binance and CME basis moves, can precede periods when spot leads and derivatives catch up.
Third, equity futures and dollar indexes around tariff headlines can gate crypto ranges intraday.
The price path into Nov. 1 will be set by tariff guidance, equity and dollar conditions, and whether leverage rebuilds faster than spot flows warrant.