Arthur Hayes Buys Nearly $1M in Ethena Ahead of Hyperliquid Vote

Arthur Hayes, co-founder of crypto funding fund Maelstrom, purchased the Ethena token this week, tying his newest transfer to a undertaking vying for management of the USDH stablecoin ticker as Hyperliquid validators head right into a decisive vote on Sunday.

Hayes has amassed a number of tranches of Ethena’s ENA token over the previous two days, together with 578,956 tokens value about $473,000 on Wednesday and two earlier purchases totaling roughly 672,800 ENA, or $521,000, in response to knowledge tracked by Arkham Intelligence.

The whole, together with these from Monday, quantities to roughly $995,000 value of Ethena tokens inside a 48-hour window.

Hayes’ purchases come as Ethena stays a contender within the USDH stablecoin race, with Hyperliquid validators set to resolve the ticker on Sunday.

Ethena’s proposal, backed by BlackRock, would use its USDtb stablecoin to collateralize USDH through BlackRock’s BUIDL fund, with 95% of income pledged to Hyperliquid and prices lined for shifting buying and selling pairs from USDC.

Ethena’s proposal is a “sturdy bid from one in all crypto’s fastest-growing and most spectacular ecosystems,” David Lawant, head of analysis at FalconX, wrote in a weblog publish revealed Wednesday.

Lawant pointed to USDe’s market cap of greater than $13 billion and Ethena having processed $23 billion in cumulative mints and redemptions with out safety incidents or downtime.

Nonetheless, Hayes’ purchase “reads as private positioning, quite than placing a backing behind Ethena particularly for the USDH votes,” Kirby Ong, founding father of HypurrCollective, a grassroots collective for founders, builders, merchants, and energy customers on the Hyperliquid ecosystem, instructed Decrypt.

“With the $USDH proposal, the deciding components will seemingly come right down to validator alignments with their present stakers, whether or not prediction market sentiment interprets into precise on-chain votes,” Ong mentioned.

Different contenders

Paxos, backed by PayPal, can also be a prime contender, in response to Lawant. It revised its proposal on Wednesday, increasing from an emphasis on regulatory pedigree to pledging a bigger share of reserve yield to Hyperliquid’s Help Fund and deferring any issuer take till the product scales previous $1 billion.

On Wednesday night, Paxos introduced it had acquired a proposal from Kraken to checklist USDH and HYPE from day one, with free USD on- and off-ramps, pending the alternate’s normal evaluate.

In the meantime, Native Markets stays entrance and heart.

Regardless of being a newly fashioned firm, Native Markets stays the highest contender, with 90% odds in its favor, in response to dwell knowledge on Myriad Markets.



Disclosure: Myriad is a prediction market developed by Decrypt’s guardian firm DASTAN.

Native Markets pitched a GENIUS-compliant USDH managed via Bridge, Stripe’s stablecoin issuer, with reserves in money and Treasuries overseen by BlackRock off-chain and Superstate on-chain. 

Its plan splits yield evenly between Hyperliquid’s Help Fund and ecosystem progress, and guarantees a HyperEVM launch with seamless interoperability.

Ong defined that whereas prediction markets “assist set expectations,” validator help “determines the legitimate candidates,” and that “in the end, anybody might help to resolve and set the route for USDH by staking their weight and making their votes recognized by delegating to the validator that finest matches their vote.”

Ong added: “The ultimate end result on Sunday could rely upon which crew good points probably the most belief and perceived long-term worth for the ecosystem.”

Decrypt has reached out to Hayes, Paxos, and Ethena for remark. A separate request was despatched to Native Markets via an ecosystem operator (Max Feige).

Different contenders embrace Sky, the issuer of USDS (previously MakerDAO’s DAI), Frax Finance with a bank-partnered bid, and Agora, which has warned towards Native Markets’ reliance on Stripe-owned Bridge whereas pledging to channel all internet income again into Hyperliquid.