By:ChandlerZ, Foresight News
On June 27, Lookonchain reported that Taiwanese crypto whale Huang Li Cheng (Machi Big Brother, Brother Huang) has sold 34 Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs over the past month, receiving 326 ETH (approximately $514,000) and realizing a loss of 399 ETH (approximately $631,000).
Among them, Bored Ape #6057 was purchased four years ago for 76.84 ETH and sold now for 7.65 ETH, resulting in a 90% loss in ETH terms. On-chain data shows that all these ETH were transferred to Hyperliquid to replenish margin for his ETH long positions.
BAYC Becomes the Final Lifeline
The reason for Huang Li Cheng's sale of his apes is that the margin for his perpetual contract account can no longer hold up.
He began taking long positions on ETH on Hyperliquid in September 2025 when ETH was priced around $4,700, typically using 25x to 40x leverage. The strategy performed brilliantly initially. From late 2025 to early 2026, his account recorded floating profits of up to $45.66 million, earning him the new label of "on-chain whale trader" within the crypto community.
However, ETH subsequently fell all the way to the $1,600 range, wiping out all floating profits and turning them into substantial realized losses. According to HyperInsight data, as of June 26, Huang Li Cheng's cumulative losses on Hyperliquid have reached $33.85 million. Calculated based on total trading profit and loss over the past year, his losses exceed $80 million.
More telling is the frequency of liquidations. By March 2026, Huang Li Cheng had already suffered over 335 liquidations, earning him the community title "King of Liquidations." Liquidations have continued since then. On June 8, he was liquidated 10 times consecutively within 8 hours, with his account balance dropping to about $52,000 at one point. On June 23, when ETH fell to $1,607, he was liquidated another 7 times within 10 hours. His account balance has repeatedly dropped to extreme lows of a few thousand dollars, once falling to just $8,500 in February. Yet, each time it neared zero, he re-deposited funds to continue opening long positions.
The on-chain data platform Arkham pointed out on June 6 that it was the first time Huang Li Cheng "did not immediately add margin" after being liquidated, sparking community speculation that this high-stakes gamble might be coming to an end. However, just two days later, he deposited funds again and reopened ETH long positions.
As conventional funding sources were exhausted, Huang Li Cheng began drawing blood from his NFT collection. He previously held about 150 BAYCs, but at the current floor price (around 8.8 ETH), the total value of the remaining NFTs is only about $1.6 million, barely enough to support margin for a few rounds of highly leveraged positions. In an interview at the end of 2025, he stated he would "hold on without selling even with $30 million in losses," firmly bullish on ETH. Half a year later, losses have long exceeded that figure, and what was once a blue-chip NFT collection worth tens of millions of dollars has now become the lifeline for his perpetual contract account.
On June 26, he posted on X: "We're going to need more Tom. 8 percent." seemingly calling for Tom Lee to rescue the market.
From Godfather of Monkeys to King of Liquidations
Looking back at Huang Li Cheng's crypto journey, his starting point was far from that of an ordinary retail investor. Huang Li Cheng is a founding member of the pioneering Chinese hip-hop group L.A. Boyz. The live-streaming platform 17 Media (M17), which he founded in 2015, once became one of Asia's largest live-streaming applications. He entered the cryptocurrency space during the 2017 bull market and met Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin at a blockchain conference in Taiwan that same year. In 2020, he participated in creating the DeFi protocol Cream Finance, which later suffered three security breach attacks, resulting in cumulative losses exceeding $192 million.
What truly brought him fame in the crypto community was NFTs. During the 2021 bull market, Huang Li Cheng obtained dozens of BAYCs at the minting price of just 0.08 ETH, then aggressively bought more. At his peak, he held about 200 BAYCs and over 100 MAYCs, with his wallet containing a total of approximately 3,200 NFTs, valued at over $40 million.
He gifted BAYCs to top Chinese celebrities like Jay Chou, personally driving the breakout and spread of Bored Apes in the Asian market, earning him the community title "Godfather of Monkeys." That was the era when the BAYC floor price skyrocketed from 0.08 ETH to over 100 ETH, and Huang Li Cheng's ape holdings were once worth tens of millions of dollars.
However, after 2023, the NFT market cooled rapidly. Huang Li Cheng heavily bought blue-chip NFTs during the airdrop farming activities on the Blur platform, acquiring 71 BAYCs and 77 CryptoPunks within two days, suffering severe losses. In April of that year, he announced his exit from the NFT market. He briefly returned in July 2024, buying another 23 BAYCs within two weeks, but incurred losses exceeding $20 million over four months. Subsequently, his focus shifted entirely to perpetual contracts on Hyperliquid, initiating the ongoing cycle of highly leveraged long positions on ETH.
From a minting price of 0.08 ETH to a peak of over 100 ETH, to the current selling price of 7-10 ETH, the price curve of BAYC itself is the most complete footnote to the NFT cycle. Huang Li Cheng's personal trajectory is highly aligned with this curve: NFTs forged his identity as the "Godfather of Monkeys" and also provided the initial capital for his subsequent continuous bets on the contract gambling table. Now, the monkeys are being sold one by one, converted into ETH, converted into margin, and then converted into the next liquidation notice.
