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Crypto trader shorted the top, still lost 3,963%

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Crypto yields are falling below TradFi

DAO token RAVE rallied to an all-time high of $19.85 this month before dumping down to $11.80 and allowing a patient trader to short a large amount at $19.

Incredibly, however, after the token declined 23% in his favor below $15, his profit and loss figure still read -3,963%.

The trader, who goes by the name “Meekdonald” on X, shared the screenshot of his leveraged ByBit trade on April 15. It showed a 12x leveraged short on RAVE/USDT with an entry price of $19 and a then-current price of $14.70.

Commentators described the token’s rally, which Meekdonald timed to nearly the “pico top,” as a coordinated scheme to lure and liquidate short sellers.

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Three wallets held roughly 90% of the token’s total supply.

Nevertheless, shorting it proved incredibly difficult and expensive.

A winning crypto short became a 3,900% loss

The culprit was the astronomical funding rate on ByBit’s perpetual futures contracts.

In perpetual futures, funding rates are periodic payments between longs and shorts and keep the contract price anchored to spot.

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When short interest dominates, the rate turns negative, meaning shorts pay longs. The more crowded the short side becomes, the higher the cost.

During RAVE’s squeeze above $19, funding rates on major exchanges reached annualized levels as high as 4,800%. On Binance, the hourly rate hit -2%.

A short seller owed 2% of notional position value every hour, or 48% per day.

Amplify those 48% daily payments by the leverage ratio, and the losses start to make more sense.

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At a 12x leverage on a cross-margin position, a -2% hourly funding rate on that notional value could drain roughly 24% of his collateral per hour.

The spot price fell from $19 to $14.70, rewarding his prediction that RAVE would decline in value. However, the cumulative funding payments overwhelmed the unrealized profit anyway, pushing ROI to nearly -4,000%.

The price moved in his direction but short funding rates moved even faster.

Read more: Outdated algorithm caused $650M excess losses on Hyperliquid, report

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Social reaction

The screenshot went viral after WazzCrypto’s quote-tweet hit 130,000 views. He rendered his final verdict with a reference to the 1983 film WarGames: “The only winning move is not to play.”

Several replies called the screenshot fake. WazzCrypto defended its plausibility in a follow-up, noting that cross margin at 12x leverage checks out against known RAVE funding rates.

Others learned a broader lesson.

One trader posted that catching RAVE’s exact top wouldn’t matter because funding alone would destroy the position, while another warned anyone planning to short RAVE to watch the funding rate or risk handing all profits to the longs.

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RAVE was trading near $11.80 at time of writing, down roughly 40% from its peak above $19.

The funding rate has since fallen from -2% per hour to -0.2%, and on some venues has flipped positive to more normal conditions.

The squeeze is over. Unfortunately, for at least one short-seller, timing the top was a terrible decision.

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Crypto World

Crypto PAC Fellowship Discloses $11M from Cantor Fitzgerald and Anchorage

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Crypto PAC Fellowship Discloses $11M from Cantor Fitzgerald and Anchorage

The committee, led by Tether’s head of government affairs, reported spending $3 million on advertising through a company co-founded by Tether US CEO Bo Hines.

The latest filing by the crypto-aligned political action committee (PAC) headed by stablecoin issuer Tether’s head of government affairs shows $11 million in contributions from financial institutions.

In a Wednesday filing with the US Federal Election Commission (FEC), the Fellowship PAC revealed it had received $10 million from financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald and $1 million from Anchor Labs, the company behind the crypto bank Anchorage Digital. The January 2026 contributions came amid $3 million in spending by the PAC for “issue advocacy advertising” with the Nxum Group, a marketing company co-founded by former White House crypto adviser and Tether US CEO Bo Hines.

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Source: FEC

Despite the significant contributions from Cantor Fitzgerald and Anchorage, Fellowship initially claimed to have “over $100 million” from undisclosed backers aligned with the crypto industry at its launch in September. FEC filings showed no receipts over $200 between Aug. 7, 2025 and Dec. 31, 2025, but did not necessarily include any contributions after March 31.

The 2024 US election season saw crypto-backed PACs spend hundreds of millions of dollars on media to support candidates they considered “pro-crypto” and to oppose those marked as “anti-crypto” by many in the industry. With party control of the US Congress hanging in the balance this year, PAC spending like Fellowship’s signals that the crypto industry could try to repeat their successes of 2024.

Related: US midterm election mirrors 2024 as crypto PACs move into Ohio races

In addition to its $3 million in advertising costs, the PAC reported in April that it had spent $1.5 million in media buys supporting Republican candidates in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District and candidates in US Senate races in Nebraska and Kentucky. Those three US states are scheduled to hold party primaries in May.

PAC’s ties to the crypto industry

Mitchell Nobel, listed as the PAC’s treasurer, has also been Cantor Fitzgerald’s director of digital asset strategy and policy since August 2025, roughly the same time Fellowship filed its statement of organization with the FEC.

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Anchorage announced in March that it would be joining Chainlink to support the launch of the Blockchain Leadership Fund, a hybrid PAC that allows contributions directly to candidates as well as independent expenditures. An Anchorage spokesperson told Cointelegraph at the time that the company would make a “meaningful contribution” to be disclosed with the FEC, but no filing was public as of Wednesday.

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