I've always had this question: People say financial markets are all zero-sum games. But I say, if you factor in the trading fees from the 'casino' (exchanges), then it's definitely a negative-sum game. In this game where 1.6 million people and $20 billion got liquidated, who ended up making the big bucks in the end? Was it the whales who shorted early on HYPE? But that's not *that* much money. The big players shorting heavily on CEXs like BN/OKX? Are they quietly raking it in? Seems like the only ones making big gains are those scooping up altcoins after the crash. But even then, it wouldn't amount to tens of billions, right? How many whales even had massive positions to short early or buy the dip? So who actually profited massively from this historic liquidation and crash? I'm completely baffled... Where did all that money go? Or did it just vanish into thin air = =.