Guides and reference · How to read the whale radar
Guide 01 of 122 min read
How to read the whale radar
The centre is today’s price, distance from it is distance to liquidation, colour is the side, size is the money.
Good for: a first look at any market, which way whales lean and how far they sit from liquidation.
Say BTC just fell 3% and you want to know which whales are still close to the line. Open the BTC radar. It shows every whale position in one market at once. A whale position is a position of $1M or more held by one of the largest wallets on Hyperliquid.
The centre is the current price
The small circle in the middle is the market price right now. Each ring marks a distance to liquidation, the move that would close a position by force: ±2%, ±5%, ±10% and ±20%. A dot close to the centre would be liquidated by a small move. A dot near the outer ring has room.
Colour is the side, size is the money
Green dots are longs, red dots are shorts. The area of a dot is the position’s value in US dollars. Stronger colour means a better track record, a faint dot a weaker or shorter one. A dashed outline marks a wallet that is probably not betting on direction: a market maker, an arbitrage desk or a hedge.
Three ways to arrange the dots
- Split, the default and the view of every tile on the overview, puts longs on the right and shorts on the left. Time runs down both halves: new at the top, the start of the period at the bottom.
- Time runs clockwise from 12 o’clock: the newest positions first, older ones further around.
- Size groups whales into three sectors: $1–10M, $10–50M and $50M+.
The period sets how far back the radar looks: positions opened within 24 hours, 3 days or 7 days, the default. The period always fills the dial, so a short one spreads the newest positions out. A position opened before tracking has no known opening time and shows from 7 days up. 30 days comes with Pro.
Where whales gather: walls
When many whales would be liquidated around the same price, the radar draws them as one soft shape along that ring, with the level labelled. It is thick where the most money sits. Forced selling or buying there can speed up a move once the price arrives. More about liquidation walls.
The outer band
Positions without a liquidation price within ±20% sit in the shaded outer band. Many use cross margin, where the whole account backs every position, with plenty of collateral.
What the radar won’t show
The radar shows positions, not intentions. It won’t show whether the price reaches a dot, or what the same whale holds on another exchange. A short here can hedge a long somewhere else.