Crypto
crypto
Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

Kanye West launched a solana-based meme coin that soared before tanking

Artist Kanye West launched a token, YZY, on the meme-coin-friendly solana blockchain, and it reached an eye-popping $3 billion market cap within 40 minutes of its launch, according to on-chain analytics firm Nansen. However, the surge was short-lived and the next 40 minutes saw its market cap drop to $1 billion, roughly where it still stands as of writing. 

The top 500 wallets realized $50.4 million in profits vs. $21.4 million in losses, with the largest realized profit at $3 million and the largest realized loss at $1.3 million, Nansen data shows.

The token is supposedly, per the website, part of a broader “Yeezy Money” ecosystem, “a new economy, built on chain.” This includes Ye Pay, “a crypto payments processor,” and YZY Card, a “debit instrument for spending YZY and USDC at millions of merchants worldwide.” 

The token distribution (or “YZYNOMICS”) includes 20% for the public, 10% for liquidity, and the rest for Yeezy Investments LLC.  

Allegations of insider trading quickly plagued the token, with Lookonchain posting: 

Recently pardoned BitMEX cofounder Arthur Hayes seems to have bought the token, asking West to “please not rug him” on X. Just a few hours later, Hayes posted, “Oopsie… fam next time pls don’t let me trade shitters like $YZY. Should have just kept two-steppin.”

Solana is also the blockchain behind $TRUMP, which is down 21% in the past month. Nansen said that while $TRUMP saw $29.5 billion in volume in the first 24 hours, “$YZY is significantly smaller,” with “$724 million in volume so far.”

In other solana news:

  • Solana is up 3% in the past 24 hours, but failed to cross the $200 mark in the past week and is down 37% from its January 19 all-time high.

  • DeFi Development Corp. acquired 110,000 SOL for $22 million. The company now holds 1,420,173 SOL and SOL equivalents on its balance sheet.

  • Sol Strategies announced this morning that it holds 400,909 SOL in its treasury. “Our validators generate SOL revenue every day. Instead of diluting shareholders, we reinvest it, letting us grow the treasury at a lower cost than buying on the market,” the company said on X.

Acheter-Louer, a French online real estate portal that underwent a solana pivot via its subsidiary Sol Treasury Corp., acquired 711 SOL and now holds 14,905 SOL.

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crypto
Sage D. Young

Hyperliquid reclaims all-time high

HYPE, the native token powering perpetuals exchange Hyperliquid and its underlying blockchain, rebounded to reclaim its all-time high previously set at the start of the month.

Treasury firms Hyperliquid Strategies and Hyperion DeFi have also rallied as the token increased double digits in the last 24 hours to trade as high as $76.70, rising past its record price set nearly two weeks ago, according to CoinGecko. In the interim between all-time highs, HYPE pulled back to around $53.

The token has several tailwinds, the first coming from ETF flows. Since their inception in May, HYPE ETFs have yet to record negative weekly outflows, posting a cumulative total net inflow of $171.8 million, per SoSoValue.

The second comes from Hyperliquid spending basically everything it earns in fees to buy HYPE, a mechanism embedded into the protocol’s codebase.

The venue’s buyback funding mechanism is set to add a new source of yield. Validators of the network activated “AQAv2,” which means stablecoin deployers will share about 90% of reserve yield revenue on their supply within the protocol.

Around $6.1 billion of Circle’s USDC resides in Hyperliquid, per DefiLlama. Accrual begins on August 26 and the first payment is made on October 3, the network announced in its Discord channel last week.

A substantial amount of capital is riding on different positions of HYPE. In total, a move down to under $53 would result in the liquidation nearly 1.8 million HYPE worth of leveraged long positions on the on-chain perps venue, or $131.7 million, data from CoinGlass shows. For the upside, a climb above $100 results in the liquidation of more than 3 million worth of leveraged HYPE short positions, or $221.5 million.

HYPE’s rebound to all-time high comes after Michael Selig, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, defended his agency’s decision to approve regulated perpetuals, or futures contracts without expiration dates, CNBC reported on Monday.

Last month, the CFTC approved bitcoin perpetual futures trading in the US through regulated prediction markets firm Kalshi and an affiliate of centralized exchange Coinbase.

“Perps are highly likely to become lightly regulated and thus approved in the US,” said David Pakman, head of venture investments at CoinFund.

“We expect to see perps for many different types of assets, from commodities to equities,” Pakman told Sherwood News.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy
6h
Bitcoin is “caught between flow deterioration and macro relief”

Bitcoin symbol in a window
crypto
Sage D. Young

Crypto market snaps back as sentiment lifts, with altcoins from ethereum to XRP soaring

The market capitalization of the crypto industry has jumped around $83.2 billion in the last 24 hours, with privacy-focused token Zcash and worldcoin, the native cryptocurrency of the network backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, leading market gains, jumping over 22%.

But the last 24 hours have been good across the board:

“Investors have been eager to see some positive signs around the Iranian conflict ending, coupled with hopeful outlooks around the CLARITY act, both breathing some life into assets,” Kairos Research cofounder Ian Unsworth told Sherwood News.

Simon Shockey, a crypto strategist at crypto wallet infrastructure firm Privy, said the upswing stems from several things converging. He pointed to how alt markets broadly were “very oversold” following the bug found in Zcash that shook confidence.

Friday, Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox said Anthropic didn’t find any more serious bugs with the Zcash protocol after Shielded Labs requested the AI firm run a security audit of the network with Mythos.

Shockey added that the pool of willing sellers has dwindled. “Even if structurally, AI is a much more compelling and asymmetric bet in the eyes of allocators, many of these crypto assets have simply run out of marginal sellers despite some shorter-term narrative-driven pumps. The only people left to sell at this point are the teams themselves and VCs.”

“Net-net: oversold conditions plus exhausted seller bases plus a macro backdrop that’s stabilized equals a snapback, especially in names that have real usage or community conviction behind them,” Shockey told Sherwood.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy
6/15/26
Bitcoin hits highest level in 2 weeks following news of Iran deal

Bitcoin crossed $66,500 Monday morning as the broad crypto market welcomed the return of a risk-on mood.

Price Of Bitcoin Reaches New High, As Inflation Rises At Level Not Seen In 30 Years
Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy
6/12/26
The second half of the year might be more auspicious for bitcoin

“Winter is over. Welcome back to crypto Spring,” one analyst declared.

Bitcoin

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