Maji Brother "drop to zero" Record

Written by: Ethan (@ethanzhang_web3)

Editor: Planet Little Flower

On November 4th, the former whale “Machi Big Brother” Huang Licheng (@machibigbrother) took action again. He reopened a long position of 100 ETH with 25x leverage using the only remaining $16,700 on the decentralized trading platform Hyperliquid.

24 hours later, liquidation descends again. On the early morning of November 5, monitoring data shows an account balance of only 1718 dollars. This operation is only 47 days away from the peak moment of his account's assets.

Back on September 18, with high leverage and heavy long positions, he once had a floating profit of 44.84 million USD, becoming one of the most notable contract whales on-chain. However, on October 11, a sharp drop hit, the market trembled, and crypto assets suffered a severe blow, continuing to dip in the following month. Amid persistent liquidation and increased positions, Hyperliquid's liquidation interface flashed red like the eye of a storm, and Huang Licheng's account “collapsed with a bang” in a series of forced liquidations: not only were all profits wiped out, but the principal of 15 million USD was almost reduced to zero, with an account that peaked at nearly 60 million USD now left with only “a few pieces of broken silver.”

In response, he left a message on social media: “Was fun while it lasted.” （「开心过就好。」）

Thirty years ago, he once stood under the real “spotlight.”

That was Taiwan in the 1990s, when hip-hop culture first entered the Chinese-speaking world. Young people dressed in oversized denim outfits, keeping the beat, and screaming all around were the most avant-garde presence at the time. The leader of the earliest Hip-hop boy band in the Chinese-speaking world, L.A. Boyz, Huang Licheng, controlled the stage, the rhythm of the audience, and also the sense of fashion of the era.

Thirty years later, this person who yearns to control the pace has gone through countless speculative attempts from different angles and in different ways, trying to stand at the crest of the waves of capital, yet all of this has spiraled out of control amid madness and clamor.

From Hip-Hop Kid to Tech Entrepreneur

From a trendsetter in the entertainment industry to a serial entrepreneur in the internet space, and then to a crypto whale with the label of “big knife cutting”, every turn of “Brother Ma Ji” Huang Licheng in the past twenty years has been filled with dramatic flair and controversy.

Clearly, he is accustomed to standing at the windward position, understands the attention economy, and is unwilling to miss any opportunity.

Born in Yunlin, Taiwan in 1972, Huang Licheng immigrated to California, USA with his family at the age of 2. He had a rebellious personality and was full of street smarts. During high school, he formed a dance group called Funky Asian Buddy with his brother Huang Lixing and cousin Lin Zhiwen, spending their days dancing in the streets, battling, and looking for opportunities in nightclubs. In 1991, the three were discovered for their unique style and officially returned to the Taiwanese music scene under the name L.A. Boyz. They swept the island with their mixed Chinese and English singing style and American street vibe. At that time, the Mandarin music scene was still dominated by Japanese idol styles, while L.A. Boyz brought in American hip-hop, which was refreshing. Huang Licheng also became a pioneer of Hip-Hop culture in the Mandarin-speaking world, sparking a wave of trend.

The L.A. Boyz of that year: So it’s Lin Zhiwen (left), Huang Lihang (middle), Huang Licheng (right)

L.A. Boyz debuted in 1992 and released 13 albums, becoming a sensation. However, as the Taiwanese music scene shifted towards the “ballad” style in the late 90s, L.A. Boyz's cool Hip-Hop Style gradually lost its mainstream market. After disbanding in 1997, Huang Li-Cheng gradually turned to business and behind-the-scenes work, and ventured into the technology sector for entrepreneurship.

In 2003, he founded Ma Ji Entertainment, fully engaging in music production and artist management. He transitioned from being an artist to a boss, producer, and businessman.

Huang Licheng always wants to be the “first person to eat the crab” and is well-versed in the ways of traffic. While shifting from the entertainment industry to behind the scenes, he has turned himself into a tech entrepreneur. He realized early on the value of traffic and attention.

In 2015, Huang Licheng and his technical partners founded 17 Media, with the flagship product being the “17 Live App,” focusing on real-time video interactive social networking. At that time, Douyu had just emerged in mainland China, and similar products like Inke and Huajiao had not yet been launched. After its release, the app quickly became popular in Taiwan, attracting millions of users and reaching a valuation of several billion New Taiwan dollars, with investments from Wang Sicong, LeTV Sports, and others.

Huang Licheng delivered a speech at the MOX Demo Day as the founder of 17 Media.

Due to inadequate regulation in the early years, various content from beauty streamers on the APP was overly explicit, leading to 17 being temporarily removed from the App Store and Google Play. Later, Huang Licheng led the team to adjust the content mechanism and shifted the market focus to Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, and other regions. In 2017, 17 Media merged with the social app Paktor to form M17 Entertainment, and the platform was renamed 17LIVE. Although Huang Licheng served as chairman, he gradually began to divest shares and cash out.

In 2018, 17 Media attempted to list on the New York Stock Exchange, but the listing was abruptly canceled on the day of the listing, and the plan failed. According to insiders, M17 ultimately could not meet auditing and reporting requirements, nor could it overcome its bid threshold on the books. Subsequently, the company shifted its focus to Japan, until Huang Licheng resigned from all positions in 2021, stepped down from management, retained his equity, and the Japanese team took over the main operations.

In addition to 17, Huang Licheng has also made several other entrepreneurial attempts, such as the “erotic chat platform” Swag and the film company Machi Xcelsior Studios, etc. However, most have not entered the mainstream until he encountered the best speculative soil - the crypto space.

Crazy Maji: Not a single opportunity can be missed.

With a successful entrepreneurial experience on the internet, Huang Licheng seized the opportunity again during the 2017 ICO crypto wave and ventured into the blockchain industry.

In 2018, aimed at social mining and token issuance.

At the end of 2017, he continued his product experience from 17 and led the launch of the blockchain project Mithril (MITH), which focused on the concept of “social mining” and claimed to create a “blockchain version of Instagram.” The core mechanism is that users can earn MITH tokens through an algorithm by posting content and gaining interactions on the decentralized social platform Lit, thus rewarding creators.

Mithril conducted a Token private sale on February 21, 2018, raising a total of $51.6 million (approximately 60,000 ETH at that time), accounting for 30% of the total Token supply. In February 2018, 70% of these private sale Tokens were unlocked at the TGE, and 30% were unlocked over the following three months.

In February 2018, after the MITH token was listed on exchanges such as OKEX (now OKX) and Binance, its price soared. However, due to the team directly selling tokens that accounted for 89% of the total circulating supply at that time within the following three months, the price quickly plummeted by 80%.

Huang Licheng at the event site of the collaboration between Mithril and OKEX

After that, the bubble burst, and the market turned cold. The projects at that time were merely concepts with numerous product flaws and no real users. The price of MITH continued to plummet without any resistance, dropping more than 99%. Subsequently, products like Mith Cash were launched in an attempt to capitalize on other hot trends to recover from the downturn, but it was in vain. In 2022, MITH was delisted from platforms like Binance and subsequently approached zero.

Clearly, the issuer made a fortune, while the buyers ended up with nothing. The Secret Silver project established Huang Licheng's initial reputation as an “early crypto circle scammer in Pump and Dump schemes.”

Launched DeFi protocol in 2020

In 2018, Huang Licheng also co-founded Baodao Finance, which claimed to be a vault management platform built for blockchain companies. It raised $23 million (44,000 ETH) at one point, but the project only launched on some decentralized exchanges and quickly went to zero.

In addition, Huang Licheng also launched the decentralized copyright trading platform Machi X, but due to its previous “scythe” reputation, the project had difficulty raising funds and was abandoned.

Until July 2020, DeFi Summer arrived.

He turned to the booming DeFi mining sector and quickly launched the lending protocol Cream Finance. As a fork of Compound, Cream supports lending of more long-tail assets and rapidly rose to prominence with high-yield mining, peaking with a TVL of over 1 billion dollars.

However, at that time, the rapid development of DeFi protocols was like pulling seedlings to help them grow, yet there were many flaws and vulnerabilities in mechanism design and security defense design, leading to frequent hacker attacks, and many protocols became hackers' cash machines. Especially the later criticized “flash loan” design — flash loans are an unsecured lending mechanism in DeFi, allowing users to borrow any amount of funds within the same block, as long as they return the principal + interest before the block ends; otherwise, the transaction will be entirely rolled back. This design was originally intended to facilitate arbitrage, refinancing, and collateral adjustments, but in reality, it provided a breeding ground for hackers.

In 2021, Cream Finance suffered at least 5 hacking incidents.

In February, Cream Finance's “Iron Bank” cross-protocol lending integration solution was exploited, where attackers borrowed assets worth far more than their collateral value by manipulating asset prices (or asset value calculations). The loss was approximately $37.5 million.

In August, Cream Finance was attacked again - the C.R.E.A.M. v1 market on Ethereum was exploited, and the attacker used a reentrancy bug in the AMP token contract to carry out the attack. The estimated loss is about 34 million dollars.

In October, Cream Finance suffered one of the largest fatal attacks at the time, and Cream's Ethereum v1 market was breached again. This was a flash loan attack (flash loan) + price oracle/stock price valuation manipulation, resulting in losses of around 130 million dollars.

The security incidents experienced by Cream Finance in the same year also include domain DNS hijacking and vulnerability exploitation.

Under the dual pressure of a trust crisis and technical vulnerabilities, Huang Licheng chose to transfer the protocol control to the renowned DeFi king, Yearn founder Andre Cronje, in a strategic cooperation approach for a soft landing, gradually withdrawing from daily operations.

Later, Huang Licheng also led and participated in various DeFi protocol fork projects multiple times, but they basically did not gain traction and soon failed.

Transitioning to the NFT battlefield in 2021

When the NFT craze swept in, he stood on the cusp again, transforming into an NFT OG.

In 2021, perhaps due to his familiarity with traffic play, Huang Licheng early on seized the NFT track and began minting and accumulating top blue-chip NFT series, especially the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) series, which had a minting price of only 0.08 ETH. A few months later, the floor price soared over 100 ETH, creating a crazy wealth effect and breaking into the mainstream. Being a star himself, Huang Licheng further leveraged this momentum by gifting BAYC to celebrities like Jay Chou, gaining enormous exposure.

In 2022, Odaily Planet Daily reported that his single address held 102 Mutant Apes (MAYC), 55 Bored Apes (BAYC), and 1.51 million APE tokens (valued at about 24 million USD at the time). Each time there was a downturn, he would buy heavily, attracting a flurry of media attention to his address, making him undoubtedly one of the largest NFT whales at that time.

The sudden turn of events occurred in the token point activity of the NFT trading platform Blur. After Blur launched its second season of airdrop points, “Brother Maji” consistently held the top spot on the points leaderboard, with frequent trading activities. Huang Licheng owns a large number of BAYC and other blue-chip NFTs, acquiring trading points through placing orders and bidding, while also increasing the liquidity of NFTs. However, with the cooling and decline of the NFT market in 2023, users earning points are not as active as before, and those holding a bunch of NFTs are also starting to find ways to offload them.

Blur's liquidity creates favorable selling conditions for NFT traders. Blur's market-making incentive mechanism allows traders to list NFTs at prices close to the floor price on Blur, further creating tight bid-ask spreads, making Blur's floor price lower than prices on other markets. This approach continuously creates a moat for Blur, increasing bid depth.

In this whale game, “Maji Brother” had a stroke of bad luck, consecutively acquiring 71 BAYC and 77 CryptoPunks over several days, resulting in significant losses. He then urgently sold off more than 1,000 NFTs, causing the floor price of BAYC to drop by as much as 25.5%. Although it was a case of “buying high and selling low,” his large-scale NFT sell-off drew accusations of a “Maji Great Cut” for draining liquidity.

In short, it was a wild operation, and in the end, he was played by the platform. According to subsequent statistics, Huang Licheng lost at least over 5,000 ETH in this back-and-forth scoring game on Blur.

The NFT market continues to be sluggish and unresponsive. In April 2023, Huang Licheng announced his withdrawal from the NFT market.

Until now, there are still quite a few NFT corpses lying in his wallet.

2024 Public Offering Meme

In 2024, the Solana-based meme is ushering in spring, and the model of “One contract address, send me money” has become a sensation, with Huang Licheng once again “embracing opportunity.”

He launched Boba Oppa ($BOBAOPPA), named after his dog, on the Solana chain. The project raised over 200,000 SOL (worth over 40 million USD) through presale in 24 hours, but on the day of launch, the coin price dropped over 70%. He also transferred some of the raised funds into the DeFi protocol Staking, another classic “rug pull” performance.

Subsequently, Boba Oppa also created favorable conditions such as burning to try to pump the price, but in the end, it quietly returned to zero among the many Memes.

Hyperliquid: The Tragedy of the Whales - From $45 Million Profit to Total Loss

In 2025, amidst the high transparency of Hyperliquid and the real-time coverage by the media and the public's attention, becoming a “strategic mastermind” whale may excite Huang Licheng once again.

(The punctuation in the image below is combined with the Odaily Planet Daily report)

“Maji Brother” Hyperliquid Account Position Profit Chart

Section 1: The Splendor and Undercurrents of Midsummer

The beginning of the story is always highly profitable. In June, he easily achieved a floating profit of over 6.5 million dollars with precise operations on HYPE positions; in July, his total long position on Hyperliquid climbed to 126 million dollars, making him the top whale on the platform. However, the seeds of risk were also sown at this moment: his stubborn bullishness on the PUMP project caused his monthly losses to quickly expand to over 10 million dollars. Although he began to stop losses at the end of July, this massive loss had already eroded the profit base built earlier.

In August, the market took a sharp downturn before suddenly rebounding, and the account profit and loss curve resembled a wild roller coaster. At the beginning of the month, his cumulative loss on PUMP reached 9.94 million dollars, almost wiping out previous profits; however, with the rebound of ETH, his unrealized profits once surpassed 30 million dollars in mid-August. On August 13, he decisively closed all positions, locking in a profit of 33.83 million dollars. But the fleeting rationality quickly vanished, and he immediately went short on ETH, only to be “killed” by the market's rapid rebound, resulting in a significant profit retracement.

Throughout August, he hardly pressed the pause button, frequently opening, increasing, and closing positions, trying to catch up with the market at a fast pace. Although the losses at the end of the month narrowed, the anxiety of “earning but not being able to hold on to it” has begun to erode his confidence.

Section Two: The Peak and Turning Point of September

As September arrives, Brother Maji seems to have found his rhythm again. He reduced leverage to 15 times, engaged in frequent short-term trades, and made a small profit from shorting ASTER. By September 19, his account's floating profit surged to nearly 45 million dollars — this is the historical peak for him on Hyperliquid.

However, peaks often signify turning points. In late September, ETH, HYPE, and PUMP all fell sharply, and his core position quickly entered into a floating loss, with the maximum loss exceeding 20 million dollars at one point.

To avoid liquidation, he added a margin of 4.72 million USDC to the platform on September 25. Ironically, amid the crisis, he still chose to heavily invest in the new asset XPL, attempting to “fight fire with fire” to turn the situation around. By the end of the month, the total value of his positions still reached 176 million dollars, but behind this massive scale, the financial defense line was already on the verge of collapse.

Section 3: The Death Spiral of October: Liquidation, Margin Call, and Re-Liquidation

October marked the beginning of a complete collapse. Nearly $45 million in floating profits at its peak vanished almost entirely within 20 days. By October 9, the account's profit was reduced to about $1 million. The next day, he was forced to close positions such as XPL, incurring a single-day loss of $21.53 million, and from then on, the account officially turned from profit to loss.

For the rest of the month, he fell into a typical “death spiral”: market decline → high leverage long position approaching liquidation → injecting funds to margin call → being liquidated again → opening a position again.

This cycle has repeated at least ten times in October. Like a gambler who has lost everything, constantly “averaging down,” but each time he does so, he is mercilessly swallowed by an even steeper decline. On October 11, October 14, October 23, October 30… his positions were liquidated time and again. Although there were occasional market rebounds during this period that allowed him to see nearly a million dollars in floating profits on small positions, this was just a drop in the bucket compared to the massive losses. By October 31, his total losses had reached 14.5 million dollars.

The Endgame? The Complete Collapse in November

The market in November has no miracles.

On November 3rd, the 25x ETH long position he held was completely liquidated, resulting in a loss of 15 million dollars.

On November 4th, his Hyperliquid account balance was only $16,771. However, he still chose to re-enter the market—using this remaining amount to open a 25x long position of 100 ETH.

After 24 hours, the liquidation occurs again. In the early hours of November 5th, monitoring data shows the account balance is only $1718, and everything is reset to zero.

From the robust profits in June, to the peak total assets of nearly 60 million USD in September, and then to total loss in November, this five-month trading war has been shocking, yet is not uncommon in the crypto world.

The same story plays out every day, only the characters and details are different.

On the same day that Ma Ji Da Ge suffered heavy losses, he had a 100% win rate with fourteen consecutive wins on Hyperliquid, and multiple long positions known as “insider whales” were forcefully liquidated and actively closed. His account fell from a peak profit of over 25.34 million dollars to a net loss of 30.02 million dollars, leaving approximately 1.4 million dollars. After that, he reversed to short, but the market began to rebound, and now his account only has 570,000 dollars left.

In the past, Hyperliquid's first internet celebrity whale, James Wayne, quickly earned over 43 million dollars with high leverage, but similarly faced a series of liquidations during the crash, losing all his principal. Since then, he has been moving around, piecing together funds to come up with tens of thousands of dollars to continue trading, only to face liquidation again, and has since become a KOL, earning commissions to accumulate the next round of “gambling chips,” repeating the cycle.

They are now continuing to leverage with small positions, and although this article is titled “The Zeroing Record,” we have no doubt that “serial entrepreneur” Huang Licheng must have ways to gather some capital to continue opening positions.

In this story, they are all like Sisyphus pushing the boulders time and again, forever unable to escape the cycle, striving towards the peak once more.

Conclusion: Speeding up time and again may be the prelude to accelerated extinction.

Huang Licheng can be said to be the most vivid footnote of the crypto era, even referred to as a living fossil. He actively and quickly plunges into every opportunity for wealth, only to later shed his shell and rush to the next gold-digging battlefield. This is also a cycle of another dimension.

In the cryptocurrency world, the lifecycle of every hot trend is being extremely compressed.

In the sharing of top traders, we often hear the “golden rule” that “slow is fast.” However, in this market where hot trends rotate like fire and oil, no one believes in “slow is fast” anymore; it's only too slow, not fast enough, and it should be faster.

Once, drawing a beautiful white paper, telling a self-consistent story, and perhaps spending some time polishing the product prototype were necessary for a project to be listed and cash out.

Later, a contract address was posted on social media, and with a call to action, millions of “fools” directly sent money. Even the President of the United States did the same, and a project with a market value of one hundred billion dollars was instantly born.

Time and again, extreme acceleration leads to madness. The 'whales' are even more addicted to clicking the buttons to open and close positions, easily amassing hundreds of millions in wealth.

Here, attention and charisma have become real money, while the assets in the account have turned into illusory gambling chips. In this distorted industry structure, losing oneself seems inevitable; narratives are forever cyclical, wealth is constantly created and also devoured. Overnight riches and instant falls are simply commonplace.

The ultimate irony is that there will always be another zeroed-out big brother in the crypto world, and more people still yearn to become him.