Author: Ma He, Foresight News
On June 29, an address associated with BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes purchased approximately 6.16 million SYN tokens through the OTC platform Flowdesk, with a transaction value of about $2.2 million and an average purchase price of approximately $0.3573.
Subsequently, Arthur Hayes posted on X platform, stating that SYN is one of the most asymmetric investments he has seen since HYPE, and explicitly said: "The time has come for options DEX to formally challenge Deribit, and Hypercall is that challenger."
Currently, SYN is priced at $0.436, with a 24-hour increase of over 40%. Since June 2026, the price of SYN has experienced explosive growth, with a single-month increase exceeding 10 times, and an FDV of approximately $110 million.
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 transfer arbitrary data between different blockchains, including smart contract calls and NFTs, not limited to simple asset bridging.
Early on, Synapse secured a place in the multi-chain ecosystem with its cross-chain AMM liquidity pools and low-slippage stablecoin swaps. During the 2021-2022 bull market, its TVL once exceeded $1 billion, forming a mainstay in the cross-chain bridge sector alongside projects like Wormhole, LayerZero, and Axelar. However, the competition in the cross-chain bridging field is fierce, coupled with the impact of the bear market, the protocol's TVL has significantly declined.
According to the latest data from DefiLlama, as of June 2026, Synapse's TVL is approximately $11.1 million, mainly concentrated on chains like Ethereum and Canto.
The SYN token, as a governance token, reached a high of about $5 in October 2021 and has remained low for a long time since.
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 build "an options exchange that can trade any asset."
Different from traditional centralized options platforms or early on-chain options protocols, Hypercall officially states that it supports trades of any size, with contracts divisible to dollar or million-dollar levels; additionally, the maximum loss on an option is only the premium paid, with no forced liquidation or cascading liquidation risks; it also supports 24/7 trading, among other features.
Currently, the Hypercall Mainnet Alpha is live. Users can directly connect their wallets to trade SpaceX (SPCX) options, and BTC put options, NVDA spreads, and other underlying assets have also appeared. The team previously claimed that their product's cumulative trading volume exceeds $55 billion.
Deribit: The Centralized Options Hegemon
Founded in 2016, Deribit has long held an absolute dominant position in the crypto options market. According to industry data, its market share in BTC and ETH options is about 85%, making it the preferred platform for institutional traders, market makers, and quant funds.
Currently, data from DeFiLlama shows its total asset value is $3.588 billion.
Deribit's advantages lie in its deep liquidity and professional tools: supporting portfolio margin, block trading, low-latency multicast data feeds; furthermore, it has maintained stable operation over the long term. However, centralization also brings inherent limitations: custody risks, KYC barriers, regulatory uncertainty, and relative unfriendliness to small retail users and DeFi natives. The complexity of options trading and margin mechanisms further amplify these pain points.
Arthur Hayes's call directly points to the industry's core logic—as on-chain perpetual DEXs like Hyperliquid demonstrate high performance, composability, and capital efficiency, the demand for the on-chainization of options, which serve as "precise tools for expressing volatility and direction," is accumulating.
Hypercall's potential advantages include: decentralization, permissionless access, no KYC, and transparency. Additionally, deep integration with the Hyperliquid settlement layer offers a trading experience close to centralized platforms while retaining on-chain transparency. However, the protocol is still in its early Mainnet Alpha stage, with liquidity depth far inferior to Deribit. Initial underlying assets are for testing, like SpaceX, and coverage of mainstream crypto options still requires time. Historically, on-chain options protocols (such as early versions of Hegic, Opyn) have also made significant attempts, but often struggled to scale due to insufficient liquidity.
Deribit's network effect is difficult to replace in the short term. Hypercall is more likely to be a "complement and differentiated competitor" rather than a direct replacement—especially in DeFi-native and emerging asset (like RWA, AI-related underlying) options fields.
What Game Is the "King of Pump Calls" Playing?
Arthur Hayes's recent "pump call" record shows clear divergence.
He previously strongly favored HYPE, predicting its price target as high as $150, but chose to liquidate all his HYPE holdings in early June. He also sold off NEAR and WLD, which he had previously promoted. On June 16 and 23, on-chain tracking data showed that he bought back a total of 91,000 HYPE tokens via exchanges.
On June 24, a deep research report on CARDS (Collector Crypt) released by Arthur Hayes's family office Maelstrom also sparked considerable controversy. The report set a target price of $4 by the end of summer.
Just 4 days later, the market capitalization of CARDS has fallen by about 22% since Maelstrom set the target price.
Currently, the price is $0.2437, with a market cap of $100 million and an FDV reported at $487 million.
On-chain investigator ZachXBT previously criticized Arthur Hayes on X, noting his multiple public pump calls over the past few days, asking "How much exit liquidity have your followers generated in the past few days?" Arthur Hayes responded, saying he was just trading normally, prices can go up or down, and stated, "This time, the call just happened to be right."
