Crypto projects have no steady cash flow, says Garrett Jin

Garrett Jin turned into one of the critical voices in crypto space, just days after only appearing as an anonymous whale. Jin, known for his aggressive BTC short positions, now talks about the sector’s need for security reserves. 

Garrett Jin was finally identified as the bearish OG whale, who appeared just days before the recent market crash. As Cryptopolitan reported, the whale’s wallets became notorious for opening short positions 30 minutes ahead of the late Friday market crash. 

On-chain investigation linked the identity of Jin to some of the OG whale’s wallets. He admitted to holding the positions, though denying any links to the Trump family or deliberate insider trading. 

OG whale Garrett Jin states crypto suffers from lack of revenue

Jin recently stated the crypto space was suffering from a lack of fresh revenue. He explained that the value taken from the crypto space through fees end up hurting BTC and ETH. 

The biggest problem in the crypto space is that most projects have no cash flow. For comparison, TikTok was sold for $14 billion in the U.S., while many cash-flow-negative crypto projects are valued at tens of billions. This diverts funds away from Bitcoin and Ethereum. Exchanges…

— Garrett (@GarrettBullish) October 14, 2025

Even though some protocols try to reinvest into their tokens, the industry as a whole suffers from ongoing extraction through exchange fees. 

Jin further showed crypto companies with no revenues are also not attractive investments. In the past years, crypto projects have attempted to build a fee structure for regular payments, but they still rely on external cash to be able to extract the fees. 

Garrett remains bearish in the short term

Jin explained the drive to take up short positions as a hedging strategy, aimed at protecting the funds of an unnamed client. The short positions are not a deliberate tool to extract funds from Hyperliquid, but a short-term hedge, as the anonymous client holds significant spot reserves, said Jin. 

The client holds a large amount of spot assets, which in itself supports the industry. While we don’t want to see prices fall, the objective reality is that the conditions for a sustained upward trend are not present.

— Garrett (@GarrettBullish) October 14, 2025

However, in the past, the OG whale’s activities were not just passive short positions. Instead, the whale also often sold BTC and shifted into ETH. 

In his role as a trader, Jin remains bearish, recently adding to the BTC short position. The position has grown to a notional value of $491M, with a liquidation price of $124,260. As a Hyperliquid whale, Jin now holds the top liquidatable short position, gradually increasing the liquidation price over the past few days. 

The position carries unrealized profit of over $15M, and is currently not threatened by aggressive counter-trading. There is also no similar level of long liquidity on Hyperliquid, while previously large-scale short positions were deliberately hunted and liquidated. Jin’s position remained safe, as BTC took another downturn on Tuesday, to trade at $111,879, after attempting to recover to $115,000.

Jin also remained critical of the crypto space as a whole, calling for more mature trading tools rather than relying on hype and narratives. He has reached out to other ecosystem influencers, calling for the creation of bailout funds and avoiding the technical risk of liquidations. Jin claimed the crypto space has too many tokens with no intrinsic value and high leverage, creating an inherently risky situation. He added that exchanges should have a stabilization mechanism similar to stocks, otherwise they’re risking similar deleveraging events like Friday’s crash.

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