December marked a shift in market behavior after the prolonged corrective phase that began in early October. While volatility remained elevated, price action across major assets became more selective, with clearer trends emerging after weeks of compression and failed rebounds.

$BTC spent most of the month stabilizing after the November drawdown, trading within a tighter range and attempting to build a base rather than extend lower. Momentum remained fragile, but sellers gradually lost control, allowing for more two-sided price action. $ETH slightly outperformed $BTC by +3.6%, while select altcoins like $ZEC and $BCH saw renewed interest as capital rotated more actively.

Unlike November, December rewarded traders who adapted quickly. Short-term rotations, selective directional bets, and tighter risk management became more effective than broad market exposure. Several traders shifted from defensive positioning into more active execution, taking advantage of improving liquidity and clearer intraday and multi-day setups.

Against this backdrop, Mirrorly’s top traders delivered strong performance. In this report, we break down the top performers of December, highlight key behavioral patterns, and examine the trades and narratives that defined the month.

This month Mirrorly’s top 3 traders are:

🏆Trader 0xade (Hyperliquid): +$2.9M

🥈Trader 0x469 (Hyperliquid): +$1.3M

🥉Trader 0x3bc (Hyperliquid): +$1.2M

0xade led the month with nearly $2.9M in profit across 38 closed positions, despite the lowest win rate of the three at 47%. His profit factor of 3.24 reflects a disciplined approach to position management: average winners were held for over 4.5 days, while average losers were cut in under 13 hours. This asymmetry is consistent with his average win/loss ratio of approximately 3.6, meaning profitable trades were, on average, more than three times larger than losing ones.

0x469 closed 53 positions with a 70% win rate and a profit factor of 1.96. A notable feature is the trade count (2,120 trades across those positions) suggesting active scaling or position management throughout the month. His average loss ($85k) exceeded his average win ($72k), indicating that the high win rate compensated for occasional larger drawdowns. Holding periods were relatively balanced, with winners held just over 2 days and losers around 1 day.

0x3bc was by far the most active, executing over 69k trades across 305 positions, showing the highest win rate (75%) and a profit factor of 1.98. Interestingly, average losing positions were held nearly twice as long as winners (22 hours vs. 10 hours), suggesting a tendency to let underwater trades work toward recovery.

Trader Spotlight: 0xade

0xade began building positions in late November, initially establishing a short bias with exposure reaching approximately -$45M around November 30. Shortly after, he rapidly flipped long, with net exposure spiking to +$30M before settling into a more balanced stance.

Throughout December, he maintained simultaneous long and short positions, with notionals ranging from +$30M to -$20M, and net exposure oscillating between +$20M and -$20M. His PnL curve shows a sharp jump to nearly $2M in the first days of December, followed by a consolidation phase before climbing further to peak around $3.2M by mid-month. He closed December with approximately $2.9M in realized profits.

He traded seven symbols, primarily majors ($BTC, $ETH, $SOL) alongside $HYPE. Most positions were held for hours to a few days, with one exception: a $MEGA short carried over from late October.

0xade derived nearly all his profits from majors: $ETH led with $1.7M, followed by $BTC (+$840K), together accounting for roughly 88% of his total monthly gains. $SOL and $HYPE contributed smaller amounts (+$170K and +$150K respectively), while he was essentially flat on the other ones.

0xade showed a clearly positive-skewed distribution, with gains consistently outweighing losses across percentiles. The 75th percentile reached +$211K versus -$37K at the 25th, a roughly 5.7x ratio. His median trade was near breakeven (-$78), indicating that while most positions were small, a handful of large winners drove overall performance. About 83% of his profits ($2.4M) came from trades within the P1-P99 range, while two outlier trades contributed the remaining $491K.

Trader Spotlight: 0x469

0x469 displayed the most dynamic positioning of the group. After starting November with modest short exposure, he shifted long in early December, building net exposure to over +$20M around December 10. This coincided with a sharp PnL spike to nearly $1.7M.

However, the second half of the month saw significant repositioning: he rotated back to net short (approximately -$15M) around December 14-18, during which his PnL retraced to roughly $600K. A subsequent shift back to net long (~+$10M) helped him recover, closing the month with around $1.3M in realized gains.

0x469 concentrated on a tighter set of seven symbols, with $BTC, $ETH, $SOL, and $XRP accounting for most of his activity. His largest winner was an $ETH long around December 10-13.

He was heavily concentrated in $ETH, which contributed $1.1M, roughly 80% of his total realized gains. $SOL (+$230K) and $XRP (+$120K) rounded out his winners. Notably, $BTC was his worst-performing symbol at -$110K.

0x469 exhibited the widest dispersion and most pronounced tail risk of the three. His distribution ranged from a -$600K loss to a +$890K gain, both outside the P1-P99 bounds. These two outlier trades alone accounted for $292K, or roughly 22% of total realized PnL. The middle 50% of trades fell between -$7.5K and +$55.5K, with a median of +$13.4K, still reflecting a positive skew.

Trader Spotlight: 0x3bc

0x3bc maintained the most consistent directional bias of the three, staying predominantly net short throughout December. His short exposure frequently reached -$15M to -$20M, while long positions remained relatively modest, rarely exceeding $5M. Net exposure ranged mostly between -$5M and -$15M, with brief excursions into neutral or slightly long territory around December 7 and mid-month. Despite a minor drawdown early in the period, his PnL curve shows steady, almost mechanical accumulation, increasing gradually to approximately $1.2M by month end.

0x3bc traded the broadest universe of the three, closing positions across roughly 25 symbols. His activity spanned majors, DeFi names ($AAVE, $CRV, $ONDO), L1s ($SUI), and perp DEX-related tokens ($ASTER, $XPL, $PUMP, $LIT).

0x3bc saw his gains spread across a wide range of symbols, with $ETH (+$540K), $SOL (+$210K), and $BTC (+$190K) as the top contributors. A long tail of altcoins added incremental profits, including $SUI (+$100K), $XRP (+$91K), and $ONDO (+$40K). His biggest drag was $MON, which cost him $240K.

0x3bc displayed a tightly clustered distribution consistent with his high number of closed positions. The median trade was slightly positive (+$1.4k), and the middle 50% of trades ranged from essentially breakeven (+$2) to +$8.6K. Most of his $1.2M in gains came from the bulk of positions within P1-P99 ($1.13M), with outliers contributing only $69K. His largest single loss (-$205K) looks like a clear outlier, while a few winners in the $140-170K range represented the upper tail.

Case Study - How $ETH Drove December’s Top Traders

All three traders featured in this month's report made the majority of their profits on $ETH: 0xade realized $1.7M out of $2.9M total (59%), 0x469 made $1.1M out of $1.3M (85%), and 0x3bc earned $540K out of $1.2M (45%).

0xade realized gains in concentrated periods (mainly around Dec 1-2, Dec 8-11, and Dec 16-18) with daily profits frequently exceeding $300K. His cumulative PnL increased significantly from ~$500K at the start of the month to a peak near $2M around Dec 18, before a modest drawdown brought the final gain to ~$1.7M. Losses were relatively contained, with the largest red bars appearing around Dec 19-20.

0x469 had a more concentrated performance. His cumulative curve was nearly flat through Dec 8, then spiked sharply to over $1M by Dec 11, driven almost entirely by a single outsized gain (~$890K). The biggest loss (-$250k) on Dec 12 caused a pullback to ~$930K, followed by a slow grind back to finish at ~$1.1M.

0x3bc traded more frequently and intraday with smaller position sizes. His cumulative PnL dipped to near zero by Dec 4, then recovered gradually through mid-month, reaching ~$400K by Dec 17. A late-month increase on Dec 31 pushed his total to ~$540K.

The chart below places all three traders’ $ETH activity directly on top of the ETHUSD price path, making it easy to see how their PnL was generated relative to market moves.

Across the full month $ETH experienced three distinct regimes: a steady grind higher into early December, a strong breakout and reversal around Dec 9-12, and a volatile decline and range-bound market after Dec 16. The traders’ green and red PnL blocks align very clearly with these phases.

Most of the PnL across all three traders was generated between roughly December 4-5 and December 14-15, a period that coincides with $ETH’s strongest expansion and subsequent reversal. As $ETH accelerated from the low-$3,000s into the mid-$3,300s and then sharply pulled back, the size and frequency of the green and red blocks increase materially across all three traders.

During the up-move into the Dec 9–11 peak, 0x469 captured the majority of the upside with a long position, as shown by the green block aligned with $ETH’s breakout. Over the same period, 0x3bc was positioned on the opposite side, with red blocks appearing while price was rising, but later recovered part of those losses during the post-peak decline, when ETH fell back toward the $3,000 area.

Across the month, short positions dominate for all three traders (ref. “o” markers). Long exposure appears mainly during the first half of the month, when $ETH was trending higher, while the second half shows heavier short bias as price moved into a downward and range-bound regime.

Conclusion

December marked a clear transition in market behavior. After months of compression and failed rebounds, price action became more selective, rewarding traders who adapted quickly rather than those relying on broad directional exposure. Across this environment, Mirrorly’s top traders demonstrated a consistent edge through flexible bias management and the ability to rotate effectively between short-term execution and higher-conviction positioning.

The profiles highlighted this month reflect different paths to performance. Some traders leaned into asymmetric risk profiles, accepting lower win rates in exchange for larger winners. Others relied on consistency and scale, extracting gains across a wide range of symbols and setups. What unites them is not a shared strategy, but a shared ability to adjust as conditions evolved.

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