The Weekly Wrap: Hyperliquid ATH, SpaceX IPO & other News

Listen to the Weekly Wrap on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. It is a summary with the help of AI-voices. 

This Week’s Top Stories

“Coinbase to Serve as Official USDC Treasury Deployer on Hyperliquid.” – Thursday, 14 May 2026 

• Last Week Coinbase, Circle and the Hyperliquid Foundation jointly announced a restructuring of the stablecoin layer on Hyperliquid. Under the upgraded Aligned Quote Asset framework (AQAv2) Coinbase becomes the official treasury deployer of USDC on Hyperliquid and will share the vast majority of reserve yield revenue with the protocol. Circle acts as the technical deployer for CCTP and native cross-chain infrastructure.
• Before this announcement, USDC did not share any revenue with Hyperliquid. From now on, they will be sharing approximately 90% on close to $5 billion in USDC today, adding $150-175 million of annual revenue to the Assistance Fund.
• As part of the partnership, Coinbase bought and staked 500’000 HYPE tokens, worth around $20 million and Circle also announced a significant financial investment in the ecosystem through HYPE staking.

“The White House’s top crypto advisor: Breakthrough update on U.S. Bitcoin Reserve is coming.” – This week 

• Patrick Witt, executive director of the White House President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, said a formal update on the U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is nearing release, citing a “breakthrough” on the legal basis, custody arrangements, and an interagency reporting framework.
• Last month, Witt already teased the announcement during a panel discussion at the Bitcoin 2026 conference in Las Vegas, telling attendees that Trump’s executive order needs to be followed up with legislation and that the White House was working on a big step forward from the executive branch side.

“SpaceX officially announced plans to go public in the U.S., set to become the largest IPO in history.” – This week 

• Elon Musk’s SpaceX has revealed its plans to go public in the U.S.; the initial public offering on the U.S. stock market is set to be the largest in Wall Street history and could start next month under the ticker symbol SPCX.
• SpaceX values itself at $1.25tn, and Musk’s majority ownership of the company means his share could be worth more than $600 billion. The IPO could make him the world’s first trillionaire.
• On Hyperliquid, the pre-IPO perpetual futures contract for SpaceX is currently trading around $205, which would result in a staggering $2.5 trillion valuation of the company.
• On Polymarket, traders are also betting on the closing market cap of SpaceX’s IPO and, as of today, 44 percent say that the IPO will close at $2.4 trillion, while 57 percent expect it to close at $2.2 trillion.
• In terms of crypto, SpaceX’s S-1 filing disclosed that the company held over 18,000 BTC with a total cost basis of approximately $661 million, implying an average acquisition cost of around $35’300 per BTC. The holdings had a fair value of approximately $1.293 billion at the end of the first quarter.

A quiet week with a few outliers 

The total crypto market capitalization traded mainly sideways this week, with the two majors, Bitcoin and Ethereum, also seeing no major price movement. Most crypto assets experienced a drop during Sunday night, continuing their downward trend since the beginning of the month. Bitcoin is currently down roughly 7 percent from its high in early May, and Ethereum and Solana are both down 12 percent from their highs this month. While most crypto assets did not bring any action this week, there are a few outliers among them. NEAR is up almost 36 percent, Venice AI is up 29 percent, Zcash 20 percent, and Hyperliquid 24 percent. 

The U.S. stock market also did not really excite too much this week, but the S&P 500 still managed to increase by roughly 1.5 percent since early Monday morning. Gold is slightly down, and U.S. crude oil is also down almost 5 percent this week, after a volatile week of trading. 

On the crypto side, Hyperliquid is certainly worth mentioning, as the HYPE token reached a new all-time high this week, trading above $60 for the first time in history.

Hyperliquid ETFs Buying Pressure 

Last week, the Hyperliquid spot ETFs went live, and they allow us to take a look at the flows in these early stages of the institutional adoption of Hyperliquid. During their first six trading days and adjusted for market cap, the HYPE spot ETFs attracted more flows than Bitcoin on three of the first six trading days; compared to Ethereum, the HYPE products saw more inflows on five out of six days. Solana, in contrast, experienced higher market cap-adjusted flows than Hyperliquid on four of the first six trading days. 

What’s also interesting is that the HYPE spot ETFs are competing with the Assistance Fund in terms of market buying pressure. During the first eight trading days, the ETFs bought 4.7x the amount of HYPE that the AF bought and burned. This is an interesting dynamic worth keeping an eye on, of course; the “burning” part is essential here as well, but in terms of buying pressure, the ETFs are certainly adding fuel to the fire.

Bitcoin Long-Term Holders on the Rise, Ether Staking Ratio Climbs to 32% and Hyperliquid’s Fee Domination 

A report from CryptoQuant shows that the BTC supply held by long-term holders (LTHs) continues to increase and has reached its highest level since August last year, with roughly 15.3 million BTC held by LTHs. The rising supply held by such long-term holders suggests that a large share of investors who bought BTC around six months ago are still holding their bags today.

The long-term holder supply of BTC is not the only thing on the rise; the Ethereum staking ratio is steadily climbing as well and has reached over 32 percent over the past few days, up more than 15 percent in the last year. Since February, the amount of staked ETH has increased to almost 39 million, up from 37 million three months ago.

We have mentioned it repeatedly in the past and covered it in our dedicated report on Hyperliquid: the protocol is dominating the crypto space in terms of fees per chain market share. Over the past week, Hyperliquid’s share of all onchain fees increased to almost 43 percent, leading the second place by a large margin, as Hyperliquid is followed by Tron with a 25 percent market share and Solana with a little over 9 percent. When looking at the market capitalization of the three protocols, it’s worth noting that Tron ($34 billion) and Solana ($50 billion) are both trading at a significantly higher market capitalization than Hyperliquid ($13 billion).

$1 Billion in Outflows last Week 

Last week, digital asset investment products saw net outflows of more than $1 billion, ending a six-week streak of positive inflows. Bitcoin saw $982 million in outflows and Ethereum $249 million, while XRP and Solana continued to attract inflows of $67.6 million and $55.1 million, respectively. The Hyperliquid spot ETFs saw almost $13 million last week during the first three trading days, and Bitwise’s product only went live on Friday last week. It will certainly be interesting to see the development of the products, with Grayscale’s HYPE spot ETF expected to launch soon. 

Q1 2026 13F filings revealed a notable cooling in institutional ETF positioning among two prominent allocators, alongside a divergent move from a Gulf sovereign fund. Harvard’s endowment cut its IBIT stake by roughly 43 percent, around $117 million, following a 21 percent reduction in Q4, and fully exited its $86.8 million position in BlackRock’s spot Ethereum ETF. 

Goldman Sachs likewise pared back, fully exiting its XRP and Solana ETF positions, having previously held about $154 million in XRP products, and cutting its Ethereum ETF exposure by approximately 70 percent to around $114 million, while retaining roughly $700 million in Bitcoin ETFs. 

Running counter to this trend, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund Mubadala lifted its IBIT holdings to 14.7 million shares, about $566 million, up from 12.7 million at year-end 2025.

AAII Members Switched Bearish 

AAII members switched bias this week, with the number of bearish members taking the lead at 43.6 percent and the number of bullish members decreasing from 39 percent to 31.7 percent. Currently, the number of bearish members is well above the historical average of 31 percent; it appears that the ongoing situation in Iran and renewed worries about inflation are growing concerns for investors. The upcoming, potentially historic IPOs of SpaceX, OpenAI, and others might also play a role for investors who believe the market is currently in a bubble and overdue for a correction. 

Interestingly, the Fear and Greed Index from CNN for the U.S. stock market is still in greedy territory at 58, somewhat contradicting the AAII sentiment. When it comes to the crypto market, sentiment remains at fear levels, at 28, after a drop at the beginning of the week.

• Polymarket Partners Nasdaq Private Market to Launch Prediction Markets on Private Companies. – Link 
• Wintermute Launches Armitage to Offer Vaults for “Hard-to-Custody” Collateral. – Link 
• SEC Ends Zcash Foundation Probe With No Action. – Link 
• Tether said it has acquired SoftBank’s stake in Twenty One Capital (XXI). – Link
• DeFi Derivatives Protocol Variational Raises $50 Million Series A Led by Dragonfly. – Link

Bitcoin hovering around $77K – what’s next? 

Bitcoin and the broader crypto market are not that exciting at the moment, unless you are exposed to the few outperforming coins such as ZEC or HYPE. The question remains how the market will develop over the coming weeks and months. Are we already in the phase between bear and bull, or will the bear market continue for a couple more months? Investors who believe that we are still following the halving cycle would likely agree with the latter and expect a bottom around October, while others who are more likely to believe that institutional adoption through ETFs and DATs has transformed the cycle into something more in line with the broader business cycle might think that the bottom is already behind us. In the end, only time will tell, and there are currently signs for both scenarios. The ongoing situation in Iran, U.S. inflation developments, the upcoming IPOs, and news surrounding the CLARITY Act and other crypto regulations in the U.S. are certainly things to keep in mind, as they all could act as catalysts for movements in either direction before the summer break. 

Below, you can find some of the key data releases and events to watch out for next week. 

Monday, 25 May 2026 

Switzerland – Whit Monday 

U.S. – Memorial Day 

Tuesday, 26 May 2026 

Japan – BoJ Core CPI 

U.S. – CB Consumer Confidence 

Wednesday, 27 May 2026 

Eurozone – ECB Press Conference 

Thursday, 28 May 2026 

U.S. – GDP 

U.S. – PCE Price Index, Core PCE Price Index 

U.S. – New Home Sales