#GarrettJinClosesZECShortWith36MillionLoss #GateSquareMidAutumnReunion

Garrett Jin Closes His ZEC Short: Inside the $36 Million Loss and What It Means Next

The headline is simple and your Urdu explanation was accurate. On September 20, 2026, trader Garrett Jin, known online as GarrettBullish, closed a large ZEC short position that he had held for about three months, and the on-chain trackers show he realised a loss of around 36.13 million dollars. The reason is straightforward: Zcash went up against him and kept going up, so his bet that the price would fall was eventually cut at a heavy cost.

Let me lay out the trade in detail. It was a short position of roughly 37,760 to 38,000 ZEC, with an average entry price around 665.85 dollars, and the whole position was closed in about an hour and a half. During the exit the price moved from roughly 1,490 to around 1,530 dollars. At the entry price the position was worth about 25.1 million dollars, but at the exit price near 1,490 it had grown to about 56.3 million dollars. That means the price moved against him by roughly 124 percent from entry to exit, or about 129 percent at the current price of 1,523 dollars. The reported realised loss of 36.13 million dollars is equal to about 144 percent of his original notional value, which tells you how badly a leveraged short can hurt when the market runs the other way.

There is also an interesting small gap worth noting. If you simply multiply 37,760 ZEC by the 857 dollar price difference, you get a loss of around 32.4 million dollars. The extra few million in the reported 36.13 million figure is most likely explained by adding to the short at higher prices, paying funding and borrow costs while the position sat underwater for three months, and some slippage during the fast exit. That part is my own arithmetic based on the reported entry and size, not an official number from him.

What happened to his account after the close is also telling. His wallet now shows a lifetime profit and loss of negative 12.77 million dollars, which means the rest of his book is roughly 23.4 million dollars in profit net of this loss. He also still holds a Bitcoin long of about 1,330 BTC worth around 107.8 million dollars, currently showing an unrealised gain of about 3.7 million dollars.

The loss did not happen all at once. It built up over time, which is the classic profile of a short that is held one more day while the market keeps printing new highs. In early September his unrealised loss was around 24 million dollars. By mid-September it had grown to about 33.66 million dollars, and by the close on September 20 it reached 36.13 million. That is roughly a 50 percent increase in the loss over just two or three weeks. He was also not the only one on the wrong side, because reports show another ZEC short worth about 18.3 million dollars that was down 7.66 million with a liquidation price near 1,551 dollars.

The important question is why he closed. He has not published an official explanation, so the following is inference based on the data. First, the trade thesis was simply broken, because ZEC went to ten-year highs on a genuine privacy narrative and real catalysts rather than a short-lived bounce. Second, this was almost certainly a voluntary cut and not a forced liquidation, because the reported liquidation prices sat far above where he exited, around 2,632 to 4,792 dollars, so nothing forced him out at 1,490 to 1,530 dollars. Third, capital efficiency mattered, because a 34 million dollar unrealised hole ties up a lot of collateral, and freeing that margin allows him to defend or extend his 107 million dollar Bitcoin long. Fourth, he was fighting his own book, because his main structural bias is long crypto, and shorting ZEC into a broad risk-on tape, with Bitcoin above 81,000 dollars and the SEC clearing a path for on-chain tokenised US stocks, meant betting against the very beta he was long. Fifth, there is catalyst risk still ahead in the form of the NU7 upgrade and ETF flows, so more upside risk was coming. Sixth, he was the squeeze magnet, because every liquidation map pointed at his size as fuel, and cutting now removes the risk of being flushed at an even worse price.

Now the question many people are asking: is the whale finished with ZEC. The answer is partly yes and partly no, and the distinction matters. His ZEC short is completely gone, and his wallet now holds only the Bitcoin long, so he is no longer a ZEC short overhang. But other whales remain. Reports show another 18.3 million dollar short with liquidation near 1,551 dollars that was recently tested, a 51.5 million dollar short with liquidation near 2,631 dollars, and whales re-accumulating longs, including one that pulled around 41.6 million dollars worth of ZEC off exchanges. So the whale exited one specific trade, but the ZEC whale map is still crowded on both sides.

The mechanical effect of his exit is worth understanding, because it is counterintuitive. Closing a giant short is actually buying, and that buying is now spent. His covering pushed ZEC up about 2.7 percent in roughly an hour and a half, and Hyperliquid funding spiked above 170 percent annualised during the scramble, which shows thin liquidity relative to the size of the position. That means one large piece of forced buy pressure has now been used up, so any further rally needs new spot demand rather than just short covering.

Let me put ZEC in context with the current numbers from September 21, 2026. The price is about 1,523 dollars, up 5.8 percent in 24 hours, up 33.5 percent over seven days, up 88.1 percent over 30 days, and up a staggering 2,869 percent over one year. Market capitalisation is around 25.8 billion dollars, which puts it at rank nine, with 24-hour volume near 1.31 billion dollars and a 24-hour range of roughly 1,429 to 1,545 dollars. There are about 16.94 million coins in circulation out of a maximum of 21 million. The all-time high was about 3,191 dollars, so at the current price ZEC is still about 52 percent below that peak. Another way to frame it: ZEC was around 810 dollars a month ago and around 51 dollars a year ago, so this is a chart that has already done most of its work, which is exactly what buried the short.

The next question is whether it can go higher, and the honest answer is that both sides have real arguments. On the bullish side, there are genuine structural catalysts. The NU7 network upgrade aims to cut block times from 75 seconds to 25 seconds, it has roughly 98.9 percent holder approval, and it is targeted for mainnet activation around November 5, 2026, which is about six and a half weeks away. The Grayscale Zcash ETF is trading on NYSE Arca and is reportedly approaching one billion dollars in assets, with a three-for-one split announced on strong weekly inflows, and it is the first ever ZEC ETF. There is also real usage, because daily ZEC volume routed through NEAR Intents jumped sixfold in a single week, with NEAR itself rising 23 percent on that traffic. On the institutional plumbing side, mining giant Foundry introduced an institutional Zcash mining pool, and the Zcash Open Development Lab raised 25 million dollars in seed funding. There are also loud bulls, with Cypherpunk's CIO giving a 4,000 dollar target and Arthur Hayes making the privacy case as well.

To put those levels in percentage terms from the current 1,523 dollars, the short cluster at 1,550 to 1,600 is only about 1.7 to 5 percent away, 1,643 is about 7.9 percent away, 2,000 dollars is about 31 percent away, 2,632 is about 73 percent away, the all-time high of 3,191 is about 110 percent away, the 4,000 dollar bull target is about 163 percent away, 5,000 is about 228 percent away, and the aggressive 14,000 dollar calls are about 819 percent away.

On the bearish side, the risks are just as real. The leverage is crowded, with aggregate ZEC perpetual open interest around three billion dollars and Hyperliquid alone holding roughly 570,000 ZEC worth about 0.7 to 0.8 billion dollars, which is a two-way volatility bomb. The move is overextended, because a gain of 88 percent in 30 days invites profit taking, and funding above 170 percent annualised means longs are paying heavily to hold. The downside air pockets are also large, because losing the 1,480 to 1,500 zone, which is only about 1.5 to 3 percent below the current price, risks flipping into long liquidations, with cumulative long liquidations near 1,093 dollars, about 28 percent down, and another pocket near 1,000 dollars, about 34 percent down, while bullish structure is arguably invalid below roughly 800 dollars, about 47 percent down. There is also the governance precedent, because back in January 2026 a developer team exit over a governance clash knocked ZEC down 14 percent in a single day, and that kind of risk never fully disappears.

The bottom line is that the headline is a story about a three-month short from around 666 dollars being run over by an asset that tripled, and the trader choosing to take the 36 million dollar hit rather than risk more. It was a risk decision, not a margin call. For ZEC itself, the signal is mixed but leans constructive, because the biggest visible short is now out of the way, the ETF and NU7 catalysts are still ahead, and usage metrics are genuinely rising. But the mechanical squeeze fuel from that specific position is now spent, open interest is heavy, and the asset is already up 88 percent in a month. Higher is entirely possible, and the break above 1,550 to 1,600 dollars is the trigger that matters most, but this is a leveraged and fast-moving setup where the downside percentages are just as large as the upside ones.