Arthur Hayes reveals $2.2M Synapse bet as SYN price jumps

Arthur Hayes has revealed a $2.2 million investment in Synapse’s SYN token after backing its Hypercall options DEX, helping drive the token as much as 26% higher on Monday.

According to a June 29 post on X by BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, he sees Hypercall, an options decentralized exchange built by the Synapse team and settled on Hyperliquid, as a credible challenger to crypto options exchange Deribit.

Explaining why he backed the project, Hayes wrote that he still wanted exposure to the Hyperliquid ecosystem but was looking for a more asymmetric opportunity.

“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.”

On-chain data from Arkham later showed Hayes purchased 6.16 million SYN tokens worth about $2.2 million from Flowdesk. The purchase came shortly after his public endorsement and coincided with a sharp rally in the token.

Hayes has pointed to tokenomics behind the investment

Alongside his endorsement of Hypercall, Hayes shared a post by crypto investor Duncan, writing, “DYOR – but I found this pretty compelling.”

In the thread Hayes reposted, Duncan argued that SYN offered an attractive risk-reward profile because it had an estimated fully diluted valuation of about $81 million, no venture capital unlock overhang, roughly 88% of its supply already circulating, and listings on major exchanges including Binance and Kraken.

Duncan also compared SYN with Hyperliquid’s HYPE during its early rally, calling it one of the most asymmetric investment opportunities he has seen in crypto. According to Duncan, Hypercall also expands the utility of the SYN token through revenue mechanisms such as buybacks.

The endorsement comes only days after Hayes reduced exposure to several other digital assets. As previously reported by crypto.news, he exited positions in Worldcoin, Zcash, NEAR and Hyperliquid after arguing that higher energy prices, large artificial intelligence IPOs and political uncertainty could weigh on crypto markets.

More recently, he also sold 6,000 Ethereum at a loss despite having accumulated nearly $10.6 million worth of ETH in the preceding days, even as other large investors continued buying around a key support zone.

Traders lock in profits after the rally

As per data from crypto.news, Synapse (SYN) price initially climbed about 26% following Hayes’ comments before giving back part of those gains as traders took profits. Even after the pullback, the token remained up more than 1,100% over the past month, having outperformed much of the crypto market during a period of heightened volatility.

Derivatives data suggested the rally was followed by profit-taking. SYN futures open interest fell 13% during the previous four hours to $31.98 million, although it remained about 5% higher over the past 24 hours.

Exchange-level data showed the largest declines in open interest occurred on Binance, where it dropped roughly 15%, followed by more than 14% on Bitget and around 10% on MEXC. The reduction in outstanding positions indicates that some traders used the surge in liquidity after Hayes’ endorsement to close positions rather than open new leveraged bets.