「BitMEX Whale」 Hayes Makes Another Move, This Time Targeting Deribit

On June 29, a wallet associated with BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes made a purchase of approximately 6.16 million SYN tokens through the OTC platform Flowdesk, with a transaction value of around $2.2 million. The average purchase price was about $0.3573 per token.

Subsequently, Arthur Hayes posted on X platform stating that SYN is one of the most asymmetric investments he has seen since HYPE, and he explicitly stated: "It is now time for the options DEX to formally challenge Deribit, and Hypercall is that challenger."

Currently, SYN is priced at $0.436, with a price increase of over 40% in the last 24 hours. Since June 2026, SYN has experienced an explosive price surge, with a monthly increase of over 10x, reaching a Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV) of around $1.1 billion.

Synapse: From Cross-Chain Infrastructure to On-Chain Options

Synapse Protocol was founded in 2021, initially positioned as a universal cross-chain messaging and liquidity network. It allows developers to achieve arbitrary data transfers between different blockchains, including smart contract calls and NFTs, not limited to simple asset bridging.

Early on, Synapse established its presence in the multichain ecosystem with cross-chain AMM liquidity pools and low slippage stablecoin swaps. During the 2021-2022 bull market, its Total Value Locked (TVL) once exceeded $1 billion, joining projects like Wormhole, LayerZero, and Axelar as key players in the cross-chain bridge race. However, facing fierce competition in the cross-chain field and the impact of the bear market, the protocol's TVL saw a significant decline.

According to the latest data from DefiLlama, as of June 2026, Synapse's TVL is approximately $11.1 million, mainly concentrated on Ethereum, Canto, and other chains.

The SYN token, as a governance token, reached a high of around $5 in October 2021 but has since been in a long slump.

Hypercall is an on-chain options trading protocol built by the Synapse team, deployed on the HyperEVM within the Hyperliquid ecosystem. Its core proposition is to create a "one-stop options trading platform for trading any asset."

Unlike traditional centralized options platforms or early on-chain options protocols, Hypercall officials state that it supports trades of any size, with contracts divisible into USD or million-dollar levels; furthermore, the maximum loss in options is only the premium paid, with no liquidation, and no cascading settlement risk; it also supports 24/7 trading.

Currently, the Hypercall mainnet Alpha has been launched, allowing users to directly connect their wallets to trade SpaceX (SPCX) options, and other underlyings such as BTC puts and NVDA spreads. The team previously claimed that their product has accumulated a trading volume of over $55 billion.

Deribit: The Centralized Options Dominator

Founded in 2016, Deribit has long held the absolute dominance in the crypto options market. According to industry data, it holds around an 85% market share in BTC and ETH options and is the platform of choice for institutional traders, market makers, and quant funds.

Currently, according to DeFiLlama data, its total value locked is $35.88 billion.

Deribit's strength lies in its deep liquidity and professional tools: supporting portfolio margin, block trading, low-latency multicast data feed; in addition, it has maintained stable operations for a long time. However, centralization also brings inherent limitations: custody risks, KYC barriers, regulatory uncertainties, and a relative unfriendliness to small retail users and DeFi natives. The complexity of options trading and margin mechanisms further exacerbate these pain points.

Arthur Hayes' call directly addresses the industry's core logic—-as on-chain perpetual DEXs like Hyperliquid prove high performance, composability, and capital efficiency, the demand for on-chain options as a "precise expression tool for volatility and direction" is growing.

Hypercall's potential advantages include: decentralization, permissionlessness, no KYC, and transparency.

Additionally, with deep integration with the Hyperliquid settlement layer, the trading experience is close to centralized but retains on-chain transparency; however, the protocol is still in the early stage of Mainnet Alpha, with liquidity depth far below Deribit, and mainstream crypto options coverage will take time; historically, on-chain options protocols (such as early versions of Hegic and Opyn) have made quite a few attempts, but they have often struggled to scale due to insufficient liquidity.

The network effect of Deribit is difficult to replace in the short term. Hypercall is more likely to be a "complementary and differentiating competition" rather than a direct replacement—especially in the DeFi-native and emerging asset (such as RWA, AI-related underlying) options space.

What Game is the Oracle Playing?

Arthur Hayes' recent "oracle" record has shown significant differentiation.

Previously, he was very bullish on HYPE, predicting a price target as high as $150, but in early June, he chose to completely exit his HYPE position. Additionally, he also liquidated his previous calls on NEAR and WLD. On June 16 and 23, on-chain tracking data showed that he bought back a total of 91,000 HYPE tokens through a trading platform.

On June 24, Arthur Hayes' family office Maelstrom released an in-depth research report on CARDS (Collector Crypt), which also sparked some controversy. He set the target price at $4 by the end of the summer.

Just 4 days later, the market capitalization of CARDS had dropped by about 22% from Maelstrom's target price.

Currently, the price is $0.2437, market cap is $100 million, and FDV is reported at $487 million.

On-chain detective ZachXBT previously criticized Arthur Hayes for making multiple public calls in the past few days, asking, "How much liquidity has your fanbase pulled out due to this in the last few days?" Arthur Hayes then responded that he was just trading normally, and the price could go up or down, stating, "This time, the judgment just happened to be right."

Join the official Coincamps community:

X: https://x.com/coincamps

Telegram: https://t.me/coin_camps