As the KAITO (KAITO) price plummeted more than 27% during the past 7 days, a crypto trader on the Hyperliquid decentralized exchange (DEX) lost $1.98 million in 8 days.
On August 10, trader 0x2be3…8082 closed a KAITO long trade with a net loss of 1,978,855. In addition to fees paid of about $4,083, this trader lost a total of $1,982,938 in about 192 hours.
Essentially, this trader opened a long position for 6,065,626 KAITO amid bullish exhaustion earlier last week. As the token traded at about $0.6693 earlier on Monday, this crypto derivatives trader exited this long bet.
At press time, this crypto user had a balance of $2,498,827 in USDC (USDC), without any perpetual position.
Crypto traders retreat from KAIKO token amid sell-off
Over the past 24 hours, KAIKO’s derivatives trading volume plunged by 40.76% to $336.92 million at the time of publication, according to metrics from CoinGlass. During the same period, the token’s Open Interest (OI) – the total unsettled futures in the derivatives market – fell by 12.49% to $93.01.
Amid the recent KAIKO price sell-off, its OI-Weighted Funding Rate, a fee set to maintain balance between the perpetual contract price and the underlying asset price, dropped into the most negative territory so far in 2026. Notably, a negative funding rate signals that traders are more bearish, as they are willing to pay the fee to long traders to maintain their positions.
As more crypto traders retreated from KAITO’s derivative market, and remaining liquidity turned extremely bearish, the token dropped 27.93%, trading at roughly $0.68028 at the time of publication.
As such, the token has faced an intense bearish outlook fueled by a long squeeze, a situation in which falling prices force traders holding long positions to sell, thus accelerating the price decline.
Featured image via Shutterstock.
