HYPE Sets Record High Above $60

Ethan Buchman of Cycles Protocol | Feist Floats $1B Ethereum Advocacy Group

Marco Manoppo & Karon Pangestu
May 22, 2026

📢Sponsor | 💡Telegram | 📰Past Editions

Good Morning

HYPE blew past $61 to a fresh record this week, but look closer and the rally has a self-referential quality, with Bitwise buying the token using its own ETF fees and Grayscale-linked wallets hoovering up $41.6M while a third spot ETF waits in the wings. Wall Street's appetite is real, yet a float this aggressively squeezed by the same issuers selling exposure to it looks less like organic demand than scarcity engineered to resemble a milestone.

Check out our latest podcast episode!

In Today's Email:

What Matters: HYPE Sets Record High Above $60 👀
Founders Highlight: Ethan Buchman of Cycles Protocol 👨
Deal Flows: Feist Floats $1B Ethereum Advocacy Group 💰️

You read and share. We listen and improve. Send us feedback at marco@launchy.app.

Narratives: Manufactured scarcity

For daily market updates and airdrop alphas, check out our telegram!

TOGETHER WITH

Arbital: Institutional Market Making, For Everyone

Automate your perp DEX market making.

Arbital helps you run passive market making strategies across Hyperliquid, Pacifica, Extended, Decibel, Hotstuff, GRVT, and HIP-3 markets - generating volume, and farming points.

Start running your automated strategies today

WHAT MATTERS

HYPE Sets Record High Above $60

State of play: HYPE jumped past $61 to a new record, up over 20% in a day, as spot ETF inflows and Grayscale-linked accumulation pulled Wall Street money into Hyperliquid.

US spot Hyperliquid ETFs pulled a record $25.5M Wednesday, lifting cumulative inflows to roughly $54M over seven trading days.
21Shares' THYP led with $16.7M while Bitwise's BHYP added $8.8M.
Grayscale-linked wallets accumulated over 682,000 HYPE worth about $41.6M last week, including $7M bought in a single hour Thursday.
Bitwise plans to spend 10% of BHYP management fees buying and staking HYPE for its own balance sheet.
HYPE peaked near $58.50 last September before sliding to $21 at the start of 2026.

Why it matters: Flows outpacing early BTC ETFs on a market-cap-adjusted basis show institutional plumbing now reaches past the majors into single-venue perp tokens.

Our take: A token buying itself with its own ETF fees while issuers stockpile inventory looks less like organic Wall Street demand and more like manufactured scarcity dressed as a milestone.

For builders and investors: Grayscale's own spot HYPE ETF is still pending, and approval would add a third structural buyer to a float already getting squeezed.

BUILDER-INVESTOR HIGHLIGHT

Ethan Buchman of Cycles Protocol

Intro: Ethan Buchman is the Co-Founder of Cycles Protocol, an open clearing protocol that uses privacy-preserving tech (TEEs and ZKPs) and graph algorithms to net out and settle the most debt among the most participants with the least capital.

Previous background: Before Cycles, Ethan co-founded the Cosmos and Tendermint projects, pioneering the "app-chain thesis" and building widely used infrastructure like CometBFT, IBC, and the Cosmos-SDK.

The big idea: Ethan’s and Cycles' big idea is to bring clearing, the "financial superpower" big banks use to net out what they owe each other, to everyone by mapping who owes whom and canceling the loops so the most debt settles with the least cash.

Take a peek at our referral reward at the bottom of this issue. Share this newsletter and receive our list of 500 crypto VC individuals 👇

INSIGHTS

Saturn Credit Tokenizes STRC Yield Onchain

Credits to Lambro for the original article

Saturn Credit hit $105M TVL in six weeks by splitting Strategy's 11.5% STRC preferred dividends into a Treasury-backed stablecoin (USDat) and a separate yield layer (sUSDat), letting users choose their STRC exposure.

USDat is backed 100% by tokenized US Treasuries via M0 and carries zero STRC risk, while sUSDat converts that collateral into STRC for ~9.8% APY.
A dynamic reserve mechanism auto-shifts collateral from STRC to Treasuries as Strategy's leverage rises, cutting yield to zero but protecting principal in stress.
The ecosystem stacks five DeFi layers (Curve, Pendle, Strata tranching, Morpho looping) with strategies ranging from 8.91% fixed to 64% leveraged.
Incubated by YZi Labs (Binance Labs) and backed by Spartan and Susquehanna, with founder Kevin Li featured onstage at Strategy's own conference by Saylor.
The token doesn't exist yet (no name, supply, or TGE date), and the program terms can change anytime.

DEAL FLOWS

Feist Floats $1B Ethereum Advocacy Group

— (@)

Deal flows slowed down this week - we saw $150M+ in deals 💼

Former EF developer Dankrad Feist proposed a new $1B-funded organization "economically aligned" with Ethereum to "save" ETH, sharpening community frustration with the Foundation.

Feist wants the group run by an accountable board explicitly tasked with pushing ETH's price higher, funded partly by staking revenue.
He noted the EF now holds under 0.1% of all ETH and receives no staking or fee revenue.
The proposal lands amid a wave of departures, with researchers Carl Beek and Julian Ma resigning this week.
Feist himself left last year for Layer 1 Tempo, while ex-researcher Danny Ryan co-founded marketing arm Etherealize.
ETH trades around $2,148 with a market cap above $250B.

Deal flows in the past week:

AEON, $8M Pre-Seed Round
Sorted Wallet, $4.4M Seed Round
Checker, $8M Seed Round
Status, $17M Series A Round
Catena Labs, $30M Series A Round
Variational, $50M Series A Round
DAOKraft, $3.4M Private Round
DACC, $10M Strategic Round
Dunamu, $670M Strategic Round
Ouinex, $3.5M Equity Round
Tomoland, $2M Unknown Round
Nof1, $15M Unknown Round
LemFi, Undisclosed $ Unknown Round

QUICK BITES

HYPE token sets new record high above $60.
Blockchain.com confidentially files for US IPO.
Ethereum Layer 2 Zero Network to wind down.
Galaxy's Novogratz and BitGo face off in court over $100M claim.
Dankrad Feist suggests $1B raise to form new Ethereum advocacy group.
Hyperliquid ETFs attract record $25.5M in net inflows as institutions pile in.
JPMorgan says tokenized MMFs unlikely to top 15% of the stablecoin market.
Cosmos co-founder's new multilateral clearing startup Cycles raises $6.4M.

NOTEWORTHY READS & MEME

YC’s read on YC Crypto deals.
Lambro’s read on Saturn Credit Full Report.
GeekPark’s read on How China is Playing a Different AI game.

— (@)

If you enjoy reading this issue, please consider subscribing. It takes 1 minute of your time, but it would mean the world to us 🙇

Disclaimer: All the information presented in this publication and its affiliates is strictly for educational purposes only. It should not be construed or taken as financial, legal, investment, or any other form of advice.