Crypto investigator links 100K BTC Hyperliquid whale to ex-BitForex CEO Garrett Jin, raising serious concerns over his financial integrity and past scandals.
A crypto investigator has linked a massive Hyperliquid whale to Garrett Jin. This whale controls over 100,000 BTC. Jin is the former CEO of the now-defunct exchange, BitForex. BitForex is in the midst of a horrible fraud scandal. This indicates a potentially alarming relationship.
On-chain researcher Eye shared the results on social media. The main wallet of the whale is named ereignis.eth. The wallet was associated with another ENS name, garrettjin.eth. This second name is one that is directly connected to the verified public account of Jin.
Jin graduated from Boston University (2008) with a degree in economics. Accordingly, he interned with the China Construction Bank until 2011. He then started Da Yo Trading (HK) in 2012. He ran this company successfully until 2014.
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Later, Jin switched his career to crypto. He was the Operations Director at Huobi (HTX) until 2015. Afterwards, he moved to Frankfurt. He was also a co-founder of FuLang Medical Germany GmbH. He stepped back from this medical platform position in 2017.
Jin was the CEO of BitForex from 2017 to 2020. This dialogue soon became highly controversial. Specifically, it was charged with intentionally fabricating trading volumes. Japan’s FSA later slapped the firm in 2023. Therefore, it was found to be in operation without proper registration.
In February 2024, the hot wallets were immediately compromised, and the private keys were hacked. The amount of money withdrawn without explanation was $57 million. Soon after, the website went down and users were unable to access it. Withdrawals were halted and all operations stopped completely. This sudden failure is what kicked off the scandal in the public’s mind.
BitForex said that all its team had been arrested. The three were under investigation by police in Jiangsu province, China. They have promised to make it open again for withdrawals. However, the exchange ended up going out of business entirely. Hong Kong’s SFC has issued a warning for suspected fraud.
Denouncements ensued after the collapse. Users also complained about denied payments and mismanagement of assets. Many users have, unfortunately, forfeited all their assets as a result. Finally, the on-chain findings connect Jin directly to the Hyperliquid operations at scale.
Jin is also the founder of XHash.com, which is set to launch in 2024. XHash is an institutional non-custodial ETH staking platform. In fact, the company would have been able to use staked ETH. This could have brought questionable funds into the new company.
These ongoing crypto controversies spell doom. It throws a huge spotlight on the financial integrity of Jin. Also, since he was involved in an alleged fraud, it implies that he has not learned from previous alleged frauds. As soon as the revelation was made, Jin immediately reacted.
A discussion with another researcher led to rapid changes. Strangely, Garrett took down XHash.com from his X profile bio. He also changed his profile picture very quickly. However, he still has XHash in his Telegram bio.
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