Arthur Hayes has turned the fight over Hyperliquid into a $100,000 wager. In a post on X, the BitMEX co-founder challenged Multicoin Capital co-founder Kyle Samani to bet on whether Hyperliquid’s native token HYPE can beat major competing tokens on price performance over the next six months.
The wager runs from February 10 to July 31
Under Hayes’ proposed terms, the contest starts at 8:00 a.m. Taipei time on February 10 and ends at 8:00 a.m. on July 31. During that window, HYPE must outperform any competing token listed on CoinGecko with a market capitalization above $1 billion. Hayes said Samani can personally choose the token HYPE will be measured against. The loser would donate $100,000 to a charity selected by the winner. At the time of the original report, Samani had not publicly said whether he would accept.
The dispute centers on Hyperliquid’s code and platform model
The bet did not appear out of nowhere. For weeks, Samani had been attacking Hyperliquid, arguing that its code is not fully open source. He also criticized the founder’s background and said the platform has structural flaws, going as far as claiming it enables criminal activity.
Hayes did not answer those points one by one. Instead, he framed the issue through market pricing. His argument was simple: if HYPE is really a weak asset, it should fail to outperform other large-cap tokens over time. If the market delivers the opposite result, critics should revisit their stance.
Hayes has already built a sizable HYPE position
The public challenge gained extra attention because of Hayes’ own trading activity. On-chain data cited in the report shows that he spent about $1.91 million in early February to buy 57,881 HYPE. Including his previous holdings, his total HYPE position rose to about 131,807 tokens, worth roughly $4.3 million based on the report’s estimate.
That purchase came after he exited positions in PENDLE, ENA, and LDO, signaling a much heavier tilt toward HYPE. The report also noted that Hayes had sold about 96,600 HYPE in September last year, cashing out roughly $5.1 million.
Addresses tied to Multicoin were also seen accumulating HYPE
Another detail added to the controversy. While Samani was publicly criticizing Hyperliquid, on-chain data showed that addresses linked to Multicoin Capital began accumulating HYPE in late January. Those addresses converted more than 87,100 ETH, then valued at over $40 million, into 1.35 million HYPE.
The report also said Samani moved into an advisory role at Multicoin in early February and stepped down from management. That timing led some market watchers to question the gap between his public comments and the fund’s observed positioning.
The Hyperliquid debate has expanded beyond code
The argument spread quickly in part because analyst Jon Charbonneau had earlier praised Hyperliquid’s matching and execution quality, even comparing it with traditional derivatives venues such as CME. That pushed the conversation back toward a broader question: whether a new generation of on-chain derivatives platforms can challenge established centralized exchanges head-on.