based16z on Hyperliquid, a dead laptop and a 25-30% win rate: "So almost always wrong"

The pseudonymous trader based16z, best known for farming Hyperliquid before its HYPE airdrop, sat down with streamer Thread Guy (@notthreadguy) for a 74-minute conversation posted on X on October 15. Most of it was spent on his own trades, including the ones that went wrong.

"I've been profitable every year in crypto and my win rate has always been around like 25 to 30%, just because of the asymmetry," he said. "So almost always wrong."

The Hyperliquid call

Thread Guy opened with their first call, in late 2023, when based16z had few market views except that Hyperliquid was worth farming.

At the time he was working as an analyst at a crypto venture fund while trading on chain. After meeting founder Jeff Yan he told his fund "we should buy this, you know, at a billion dollars before it makes any money." The fund agreed. Hyperliquid did not.

"Jeff said, we like you guys, but no thank you. I need the Bitcoin Immaculate Conception," he recalled. "At which point I was like, okay, well, then I'll just spend the next year farming this as my full-time job."

By his own count that meant trading about $3 billion of Bitcoin volume on the exchange without prior perpetual-futures experience.

He also said he had come close to working at Andreessen Horowitz as a college sophomore. "I think they rejected me at the last round," he said, in a clip shared by @mostluckiestmax.

The laptop

The keys to all his farming wallets were "on a shitty old MacBook" that died the week before the airdrop. "I knew this was gonna be like the big play at the time, and so I was like, well, fuck," he said.

An old roommate turned out to still have a laptop from his first apartment in New York's East Village. Once he was back in, "the first thing I did was buy more." He then texted a friend to ask whether that was wise; the advice was to sell, put a bunch into the S&P "and change your life."

"I think that was actually the right advice in hindsight," he said. He sold part of his position then. Selling the rest "in like the $30 range, out of impatience, honestly," he called "probably a mistake."

Two trades

"Like this year, like all my P&L is from two trades," he said. The first was "jamming weekly Bitcoin calls" around a headline involving US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent: bought short-dated enough, "you can get up to like 300x levered" on notional. The second was Robinhood.

He was candid about losses. His biggest, he said, are "definitely perpetual futures," and the lesson he took was "if at first you don't succeed, actually stop in trading." On Snap, where he said he went "full port," the problem he missed was "a historically terrible management team."

He said he has had 50-60% portfolio drawdowns at smaller size but has "never had a full blow-up."

American Eagle and sizing

His clearest example of conviction meeting oversizing was American Eagle. He had followed an X account, SleepySol, that spent about three months calling the retailer a cheap turnaround. When the Sydney Sweeney campaign broke, "I basically ripped 80% book in the spot, American Eagle," he said.

The stock tripled, but he took profit on most of the position early. "I had sized so big, I'm like glued to the tick chart."

His answer since has been structural: "I literally just keep all short-term Treasuries, like 70% of my portfolio, and then I'll just take big bets" with the rest. If the bets blow up, the 70% is there to try again.

After the money

Money came with its own problems. He recalled spending "three years of your life, 16 hours a day on the computer," and dating a woman whose father was a multi-billionaire, who told him "$10 million is like no money."

Once the money came in, he said, he bought "six different pairs of Balenciaga shoes." In a clip shared by @Jackkk, he described buying a Cadillac Escalade from a friend on impulse, leaving it in a parking garage for two months and never using it.

Asked about his public persona, he said: "The Twitter is a, that's a whole other persona."

Quotes are taken from the published video and lightly edited for filler words. The full conversation is linked below.

18+ only. Trading with leverage and gambling carry a high risk of loss. Never risk money you need, and get free, confidential help at BeGambleAware or 1-800-GAMBLER (US).