JELLYJELLY big pump 224% raises Whale manipulation suspicions! Aster opens 200x leverage to add fuel to the fire.

JELLYJELLY Token surged over 224% on November 3rd on the Solana Blockchain, with the price climbing to $0.187, triggering $13 million in short positions liquidations. Traders accused Crypto Assets Whales of manipulating the price through stop-loss triggers and deceptive trading. On the same day, Aster announced the launch of JELLYJELLY contracts with a maximum leverage of up to 5 times.

JELLYJELLY surges 224% in a single day, liquidating 13 million short positions

(Source: CoinMarketCap) The token related to the social video app Jelly, co-founded by Venmo co-founder Iqram Magdon-Ismail, skyrocketed over 224% on the Solana blockchain on November 3, 2025, with a market capitalization exceeding $188 million and a trading volume reaching $220 million. The price surged from $0.049 to $0.187, and such explosive increases are not uncommon in the Meme coin space, but the manipulation allegations behind it have drawn widespread attention.

This triggered a $13 million liquidation of perpetual contract short positions, which is the most striking data from this event. When prices rise rapidly, short traders face the risk of insufficient margin, and if they cannot add margin in time, their positions will be forcibly liquidated. The $13 million liquidation scale indicates that a large number of traders established short positions before the price surge, possibly believing based on technical analysis or fundamental judgment that JELLYJELLY would decline, but they encountered the reverse operations of cryptocurrency whales.

Traders on exchange X accuse crypto assets whales of manipulating prices through triggering stop-loss orders and deceptive trading, similar to the situation in March when Hyperliquid exchange experienced a 1000% surge and drop that led to its delisting. Stop Hunt is a common manipulation technique: crypto assets whales first drive the price up rapidly, triggering a large number of short positions' stop-loss orders, and the execution of these stop-loss orders further pushes up the price, creating a chain reaction. Spoofing refers to placing large buy orders to create an illusion of demand, attracting retail investors to follow suit before withdrawing orders and operating in the opposite direction.

JELLYJELLY is a meme coin created by Venmo co-founder Iqram Magdon-Ismail and early Venmo investor Sam Lessin. Lessin posted on X saying, “As someone who claims to be chaos-neutral and idolizes Jack Sparrow… I wholeheartedly support this crazy cryptocurrency war, which is happening between gamblers, crypto whales, and cryptocurrency trading platforms using JMJ, even though I have nothing to do with it and only know a little bit!” This statement shows that the founders of JELLYJELLY have taken an ambiguous stance on the manipulation events, neither clearly condemning nor actively defending them.

$JELLYJELLY # JELLYJELLY Key Data for November 3

Daily Increase: 224% (from 0.049 USD to 0.187 USD)

Market Cap Breakthrough: 188 million USD

Trading Volume: 220 million USD

short positions liquidation: 13 million USD

Aster offers 200x leverage as a tool for manipulation

On November 3rd, according to official news, Aster has launched the JELLYJELLY contract with a maximum leverage of up to 5 times. In addition, the Aster platform has now introduced 200 times leverage trading, applicable to ASTER, BTC, ETH, and BNB. This timing choice has sparked controversy, as it was on the same day that JELLYJELLY faced manipulation allegations that Aster announced the launch of contract trading for that Token.

200x leverage is extremely rare and controversial in the crypto assets field. Compared to the Hyperliquid platform, the maximum leverage for BTC on Hyperliquid is 40x, 25x for ETH, 20x for SOL, and 10x for BNB. Aster's 200x leverage means that a price fluctuation of just 0.5% could lead to a total liquidation, which poses a high demand for risk management.

This extremely high leverage provides an ideal tool for the manipulation of Crypto Assets by Whales. When price fluctuations are minimal but can trigger large-scale liquidations, Whales can create drastic price movements with relatively small amounts of capital, profiting from the liquidations of retail investors. 200x leverage essentially turns trading into a zero-sum game, where one party's liquidation directly becomes the other party's gain.

From a regulatory perspective, 200x leverage is illegal in most jurisdictions. The US CFTC limits the leverage multiple for retail investors to 50x, while the EU and the UK limit it to 30x, and many Asian countries restrict it to 20x. Although Aster, as a decentralized platform, is not bound by these restrictions, it also means that users are fully exposed to extreme risks without any regulatory protection.

March Hyperliquid Manipulation Incident Warning

Looking back at March 2025, Solana experienced its second Crypto Assets Whale manipulation incident within two weeks, where a user shorted the Solana meme coin JELLYJELLY on a decentralized exchange, resulting in significant losses for the protocol shortly thereafter. The wallet address “0xde96” established a short position during the period when the Crypto Assets Whale was dumping JELLYJELLY tokens on the decentralized exchange (DEX), causing the price of the token to plummet, forcing Hyperliquid's HLP treasury to take over the initial short position.

Subsequently, the newly created wallet “0x20e8” established long positions. According to data from Lookonchain, this strategy caused HLP's unrealized losses to expand to approximately 12 million USD. This operation is extremely sophisticated: first, a large amount of sell-off is used to lower the price and establish short positions, and then long positions are established with new accounts to push the price up, causing the HLP vault that took over the short positions to incur losses.

As Hyperliquid struggles to control the situation, some social media users suggest that centralized exchanges competing with Hyperliquid should launch JELLYJELLY futures contracts to stimulate more trading and potentially undermine the strength of their competitors. There is speculation that if the price of this meme coin reaches a certain level, it could destroy the treasury of HLP. About an hour later, Binance and OKX launched perpetual futures trading for JELLYJELLY.

However, at the same time, Hyperliquid suspended trading of JELLYJELLY and froze the contract. “After discovering suspicious market activity, the validator group held a meeting and voted to delist the violators of JELLYJELLY,” the protocol announced. “All users except for the marked addresses will receive full compensation from the Hyper Foundation. This will be automatically completed in the coming days based on on-chain data,” the team stated, adding, “As of the time of publication, HLP's 24-hour profit and loss is approximately 700,000 USDC. We will make technical improvements and learn from this experience to strengthen the network.”

According to HYPE price data from The Block, Hyperliquid's native Token dropped by as much as 22% during the event, but as of the time of writing, the decline has narrowed to around 10%. This price reaction indicates a lack of confidence in the market regarding Hyperliquid's ability to handle the manipulation event. Although the protocol has promised full compensation to users, the platform's reputation has been damaged.

Manipulation Risks and Regulatory Vacuum of Decentralized Exchanges

This is the second incident of cryptocurrency whale manipulation that occurred on the Hyperliquid platform in March. On March 12, a cryptocurrency whale established a long position in Ethereum worth $306 million, making a profit of $1.86 million after withdrawing $17 million USDC. At that time, there were rumors that the protocol was exploited, but the Hyperliquid team stated that its trading engine could not handle such a large position.

In the past two months, two major manipulation incidents have occurred, revealing the structural weaknesses of decentralized derivatives exchanges. Centralized exchanges typically have well-established risk control systems, including position limits, price circuit breakers, and abnormal trading monitoring. Decentralized exchanges, in order to maintain their permissionless and censorship-resistant characteristics, often lack these protective mechanisms, making it easier for cryptocurrency whales to manipulate.

The HLP (Hyperliquidity Provider) vault mechanism of Hyperliquid is another risk point. When users establish extreme positions and the market moves in an unfavorable direction, the HLP vault acts as the last counterparty to bear the losses. This design works well under normal market conditions, but is extremely vulnerable when faced with deliberate manipulation. Crypto Assets whales can exploit this mechanism to attack the HLP vault by creating extreme price fluctuations.

From a regulatory perspective, these manipulative behaviors are serious criminal offenses in traditional financial markets, facing hefty fines and imprisonment. However, in the decentralized crypto market, due to the lack of clear regulatory bodies and enforcement mechanisms, crypto asset whales can carry out these operations relatively freely. Aster launching 200x leverage and JELLYJELLY contracts at this time may further exacerbate the risks of market manipulation.

Investor Warnings and Risk Management Recommendations

For ordinary investors, the JELLYJELLY incident offers profound lessons. Firstly, avoid using high leverage on highly volatile Meme coins. The $13 million liquidation loss was mainly borne by retail investors, who underestimated the ability of Crypto Assets whales to manipulate the market. Secondly, be cautious of the risk control deficiencies of decentralized exchanges. While decentralization offers privacy and freedom, it also means a lack of protective mechanisms. Thirdly, do not easily trust projects endorsed by celebrities. Even if JELLYJELLY is associated with the founder of Venmo, it does not mean it has intrinsic value or is immune to manipulation.

For investors considering using 200x leverage on Aster, it should be recognized that this is essentially gambling rather than investing. Prices only need to fluctuate by 0.5% to trigger a total liquidation, making this risk-reward ratio extremely unreasonable. Even the most professional traders rarely use more than 20x leverage, as higher leverage means smaller tolerance for errors and greater emotional pressure.