"Oil (good) v. Hynix (bad) … split market…again," Jim Cramer tweeted during the chaos that struck SK Hynix’s perpetual contract on Hyperliquid. The contract plunged 17.9% in one day, liquidating $57.4 million worth of long positions across 960 accounts after a faulty price print from a South Korean alternative trading venue triggered a cascade of sell-offs.
The flash crash originated on NXT, a relatively new Korean stock exchange operating extended hours beyond the main Korea Exchange. At around 8 a.m. local time, an abnormal pre-market order priced a single SK Hynix share at 1,272,000 won, a steep 28.7% drop from the previous session’s close of 1,785,000 won. This price anomaly rippled through to the perpetual contract, which relies on external price feeds during trading hours. Though neither Hyperliquid nor Trade.xyz the firm operating the SK Hynix contract has verified the print, traders confirmed the sudden collapse. Korean trading was subsequently halted amid market turmoil.
The contract’s price drop was notably smaller than the underlying stock’s errant quote, thanks to Trade.xyz’s predefined "discovery bounds" that limit price swings to prevent excessive volatility. Specifically, these bounds restrict instantaneous moves to 10%, with one allowed reset, effectively capping the perp’s drop at 19% below the reference price. The final 17.9% decline fell just short of this threshold, absorbing nearly 11 percentage points of what would have been a much larger crash.
Market analysis from on-chain tracker MarketsAlpha detailed the fallout: 960 long accounts were liquidated, realizing about $17.3 million in losses, while approximately 100 short accounts were auto-deleveraged, booking $10.8 million in profits. This incident highlights the risks tied to price oracle mechanisms, especially when sourcing data from less liquid, extended-hour venues. SK Hynix’s ordeal follows a broader episode of volatility affecting AI memory stocks and the Korean market’s 8% KOSPI drop earlier that day.
This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
