Taiki Maeda
Poker grinder turned yield-farming YouTuber who sold his HYPE airdrop for Fartcoin, then made $5.62M trading on Variational.
- Est. PnL
- ~$13M
- Location
- New York
- born in Tokyo
- Second-biggest PnL on Variational making $5.62M, while farming points that could be worth another $3M at TGE
- Sold his Hyperliquid airdrop for Fartcoin, citing its total addressable market: "everybody farts". The HYPE he sold is now worth $900,000
- Panic-sold his Zcash bag at the exact $300 bottom, then came back from his honeymoon and went all in; now calls $20,000 per ZEC realistic
- Never knew his father, lost his mother in sixth grade, and was raised by his uncle while working in the family restaurant
- Laid off in 2020, he played online poker with his COVID unemployment checks, made $50,000, then followed his poker friends into DeFi summer
Notable trades
VAR
2025–2026
+$5.62M
Ran nearly every trade through Variational so even losers earned points. Second of 73,353 accounts at $5.62M on $39.3M of volume. About 30,000 points, worth about $3M at his own $100 a point.
ETH
Sep–Nov 2025
+$578k
Shorted $1M of ETH near $4,150, then $1.5M near $3,387, on Variational, and closed after two months for $578,000. The bet: BitMine's buying was exit liquidity.
HYPE
Dec 2024
$117k, now ~$900k
Farmed Hyperliquid from the April 2023 closed alpha, then on 5 December 2024 sold the airdrop, roughly 10,000 HYPE, for $117,000 in one minute to buy Fartcoin. At about $90 on 24 September 2026 the same tokens are worth about $900,000.
ZEC
Jun–Sep 2026
Max long
Sold the whole bag under $300 during the June 2026 bug scare, a price it held for ten minutes. Bought back from $500 to $800, and by September had most of his net worth in ZEC, spot plus leverage, as it hit $1,500. Target $20,000.
HYPE
Apr 2025
+$114.7k
Won pvp.trade's 128-player Last Man Standing on Hyperliquid for $114,705.29, and kept about $86,000 after giving the runner-up 25%.
JEWEL
2021–Jan 2022
Best trade
The last stop of the 2021 rotation he calls his best trade. Sold part on 1 January 2022 to push the tax into the next year, near the top; JEWEL later fell more than 99%.
Trading style
Farm first, then go for the jugular. He treats airdrop farming as the most reliable edge a retail trader has, since new tokens launch at valuations too high to buy. The base book is stablecoins and points on new perp DEXs, farm tokens are sold rather than held, and directional trades run through points venues as a Texas hedge: win the trade, or get paid in points.
He plays for slugging percentage over batting average. Returns are position size times percentage gain, so he starts small, adds as the market validates the thesis, and takes most of his risk in the early stretch of a bull market. Turns are read with three questions: how people are positioned, who is left to sell, who is left to buy. Only two kinds of token get capital: store-of-value coins and tokens that buy back supply. Leverage comes off at the first target, set by how easy the next 2x looks; spot is held for long-term capital gains. After any big win or loss he goes to cash for a dopamine detox.
His influences are poker, Stanley Druckenmiller and Paul Tudor Jones on pressing winners, George Soros on reflexivity, and the book Best Loser Wins.
Quotes
“Not having a gambling addiction is an edge.”
“Hope is not a strategy.”
“Put all your eggs in one basket and watch it very closely. Be a courageous pig.”
“I have to have a memory of a goldfish. It doesn't matter what happened before. What matters is what's going to happen in the future.”
Interviews
Contributors
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