Arthur Hayes Buys $2.2M SYN, Backs Hypercall vs Deribit

Arthur Hayes, co-founder and former CEO of BitMEX, bought roughly $2.2 million of SYN tokens through the over-the-counter firm Flowdesk on June 29. The trade totaled about 6.16 million SYN, and Hayes accompanied the purchase with a public endorsement on X.

Hypercall is an onchain options trading protocol built on Hyperliquid’s HyperEVM, the network’s smart-contract layer. The platform allows continuous options trading, with positions tradable 24 hours a day and buyers’ downside risk capped at the premium paid. The protocol was developed by the Synapse team and SYN is the native token of that project.

SYN had risen more than tenfold during June before Hayes’s purchase. After his public backing, Synapse’s market capitalization moved into a $55 million to $60 million range and reported daily trading volumes exceeded $95 million.

Deribit has been the dominant venue for crypto options trading. Decentralized options platforms have generally faced greater engineering and scaling challenges compared with spot and perpetual-futures products.

Hayes wrote on X that he wanted asymmetric exposure to the Hyperliquid ecosystem and identified Hypercall, owned by SYN, as the options DEX to watch. He posted: “I still want to be long the Hyperliquid ecosystem but I need some asymmetry. It’s time for an options dex to properly take on Deribit. Hypercall, owned by $SYN, is that challenger. Let’s see if they can cook.”

Blockchain transaction records linked to Hayes’s wallets have shown trading that did not always match his prior public endorsements. The recent purchase and post increased attention on Hypercall and SYN.

Metrics to monitor for Hypercall’s adoption include trading volume, open interest, active users and platform security.