HYPE or SOL?

Plus: The payment networks are up to something…

Crypto Consumer

Jun 03, 2026

We’re posting twice a week now! Expect a mid-week Wednesday post and one to start your Monday morning :)

On today’s menu:

👏Arthur Hayes Bets $100K on HYPE to Outperform SOL
😯Anthropic Files Confidential S-1 with the SEC Ahead of IPO
🤔Payments Giants are Building Something Huge

Today’s Big Stories:

HYPE vs SOL – Who Wins?

Arthur Hayes challenged Kyle Samani — Multicoin Capital’s co-founder and one of Hyperliquid’s loudest critics — to a $100,000 charity bet that HYPE will outperform every other top-10 crypto in USD terms by year-end.

Samani accepted and picked Solana.

The trash talk backstory makes this better: Samani had previously called Hyperliquid “Binance 2.0” and accused it of being a regulatory time bomb, while Hayes publicly called those takes wrong and has been pounding the table on HYPE for months.

So far Hayes is winning.

HYPE hit a record near $70 on May 31 and cracked the top 10 by market cap — up 186% YTD.

SOL is 40% down.

The engine behind it: the CFTC cleared the first U.S. perpetual futures contract, giving Hyperliquid a massive regulatory tailwind, and the Assistance Fund has been buying back $1.16 billion in HYPE while the token hit new highs — a built-in buyer that keeps the bid firm.

SOL, meanwhile, is a dominant, battle-tested L1 with real developer activity and institutional inflows — not a bad bet. But its token has taken a beating.

Both parties agreed to take 00:00 UTC on 2 June 2026 to be the time both token prices are taken.

The prices for each would be:

HYPE: $73.51
SOL: $81.13

As meaningless as this bet is ($100K is legitimately a drop in the bucket for these millionaires), it’s nice that these KOLs are putting money on the line instead of just predicting. Makes for better entertainment.

The IPO Race for AI

On June 1, Anthropic confidentially submitted a draft S-1 to the SEC for a proposed IPO — giving the company the option to go public once the SEC completes its review, with no share count or price set yet.

Two days earlier, it closed a $65 billion Series H at a $965 billion post-money valuation — eclipsing rival OpenAI’s value for the first time, with a $47 billion annual revenue run rate.

A confidential S-1 is the first real step toward a public listing — it lets Anthropic test its story with the SEC and lock in the process before the market sees a single number.

The timing is no accident.

OpenAI raised $122 billion in March at an $852 billion valuation and is sprinting toward its own IPO. Anthropic just filed first.

Both companies are targeting mega-IPOs for late 2026, making this one of the most anticipated public market debuts since Meta — except this time two companies are racing to the finish line at the same time, and whichever one lands first sets the benchmark the other has to beat.

Altman also said OpenAI is in no rush to IPO, but if you lost the girl, of course you’re going to deny that you were interested.

This might light up the newest Dot Com Boom – a new wave of AI IPOs may be on the horizon, and we’re possibly witnessing the very start.

The Payments Cartel Building Together in Secret

Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard are close to launching a new joint stablecoin platform — and Coinbase is looking into joining too, according to three people familiar with the plans.

None of the companies will comment.

That’s the whole story, and it’s enough. These are three companies that hold the entire payments infrastructure between them — and they’re building something together. This is saying a lot.

The stablecoin context makes it click: Stripe spent $1.1 billion acquiring Bridge, Mastercard spent $1.8 billion on BVNK, and Visa just expanded its stablecoin settlement pilot to nine blockchains including Base, Polygon, and Solana.

Every major payment player has spent the last 18 months buying stablecoin infrastructure separately. Now they’re combining.

The most interesting detail is Coinbase’s potential role — Coinbase and Circle have a revenue-sharing deal on USDC that comes up for renewal in August 2026, meaning how that negotiation lands could determine whether Coinbase brings USDC distribution into the platform or gets squeezed out entirely.

A joint stablecoin platform backed by Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, and Coinbase wouldn’t just be big — it would be the dollar-on-chain infrastructure the entire internet runs on.

You can bet that agentic payments will be built in, but how will it work and who’s it for? These players serve both institutions and the average consumer, but with the huge institutional narrative, I’m betting it’s the former. Perhaps FX pools with all stable pairs is the new theme here.

Details are still thin. We’ll watch this closely.