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Hyperliquid Backlash Grows After Multicoin Shakeup
🧵 Kyle Samani’s post exit critique ignites HYPE speculation. Plus: ⛏️ Bitcoin mining difficulty sees its sharpest reset since 2021.
Juan Aranovich
February 09, 2026
Hi! In today’s edition:
😦 Kyle Samani criticizes Hyperliquid days after leaving Multicoin
⛏️ Bitcoin mining difficulty falls about 11% as weaker miners drop out
🤖 Ethereum Foundation explains ERC 8004 for AI agent reputation
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Kyle Samani’s Hyperliquid Critique Sparks Speculation After Multicoin Exit
Crypto Twitter lit up this weekend after Kyle Samani publicly slammed Hyperliquid just days after stepping down from Multicoin Capital. The timing raised eyebrows, especially as onchain data showed wallets linked to Multicoin accumulating more than $40 million worth of HYPE around the same period.
Samani didn’t mince words, calling Hyperliquid “everything wrong with crypto,” citing its closed-source code, permissioned design, and governance trade-offs.
“Hyperliquid is not permissionless,” he wrote.
The criticism stood in sharp contrast to Multicoin’s apparent bullish positioning, fueling speculation that internal disagreements over HYPE may have played a role in his departure.
That narrative gained more traction when Samani was directly asked about Multicoin’s HYPE buys. His response was blunt: “I don’t work there.”
There’s no confirmation that Hyperliquid factored into Samani’s exit, and neither side has tied the move to portfolio decisions.
Today on Unchained on Air
Markets are rattled. Crypto just got wrecked.
At 3:30 pm ET, Laura Shin sits down with Parker White on Unchained to break down what really happened during last week’s 5/2 selloff—and what comes next.
Then at 4:30 pm ET, Bits + Bips goes deeper: Chris Perkins, Ram Ahluwalia, and Austin Campbell are joined by Nic Carter to debate the crash, Bitcoin’s quantum risk, Hyperliquid vs. Kyle Samani, and the macro forces shaping it all.
Bitcoin Mining Gets a Rare Reset as Weaker Players Drop Out
Bitcoin’s mining system just went through one of its biggest resets in years. Mining difficulty, a built-in setting that controls how hard it is to earn new bitcoin, fell by about 11%, the sharpest drop since China’s mining ban in 2021. That decline reflects how many machines have gone offline as prices slid and operating costs surged.
The pressure on miners has been intense. Bitcoin is down sharply from its October highs, while the amount miners earn for their computing power has fallen by roughly half, from about $70 to $35 at peak levels. For miners with older equipment or high electricity bills, running machines simply stopped making sense. Severe winter storms in the U.S., especially in Texas, added to the strain by forcing large mining sites to shut down to protect local power grids.
While the drop looks alarming, it’s also how Bitcoin self-corrects. With fewer miners competing, those still operating face less competition and slightly better odds of earning rewards. Historically, moments like this — when miners give up under pressure — have often marked periods where the market begins to stabilize.
The market just went through one of its sharpest drawdowns in years.
On Friday, we published a piece breaking down why Vitalik’s capitulation on L2s matters for ETH and L2 tokens, and which narratives actually survive a reset like this.
Nothing in that analysis has changed. If anything, the market move made it more relevant.
If you’re trying to figure out what’s worth owning after the dust settles, this one’s for you.
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Want to Hire an AI Agent? Check Their Reputation Via ERC-8004
Davide Crapis of the Ethereum Foundation breaks down what ERC-8004 is and how it works.
The ERC-8004 standard for trustless AI agent interactions is finally live on mainnet!
Ethereum Foundation AI Lead Davide Crapis joins to explain what the standard is, how it works, how it’s protected against manipulation, and what’s next.
Listen to find out his most interesting experience building the project and tips for builders looking to start businesses around AI agents.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Podcast Addict,Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.
🇰🇷⚠️ South Korea’s Bithumb accidentally credited some users with bitcoin instead of small cash rewards during a promotion, triggering panic selling that briefly knocked BTC prices on the exchange down about 15% before internal controls halted further damage and ruled out hacking.
👥 Tether is accelerating its global expansion by growing its workforce from about 300 to 450 employees over the next 18 months, reinvesting surging profits from its $185 billion USDT stablecoin into hiring, technology, and investments spanning agriculture, media, AI, and energy.
🇨🇳🚫 Chinese regulators formally locked in a sweeping crypto crackdown by banning all unapproved yuan-linked stablecoins and classifying most real-world asset tokenization as illegal, framing both as threats to financial stability and national security even when issued offshore.
💰 The MegaETH Foundation plans to use revenue from its USDM stablecoin—backed indirectly by BlackRock’s tokenized money-market fund—to regularly buy MEGA tokens, tying future token supply releases to measurable ecosystem growth instead of a single launch event.
🛡️ Binance added another $300 million worth of Bitcoin to its SAFU emergency protection fund and plans further purchases, building a larger safety buffer for users as Bitcoin prices swing sharply and the broader crypto market faces heavy volatility.
🌐 ENS Labs abandoned plans for its custom Namechain layer 2 network and will deploy the next version of Ethereum Name Service entirely on Ethereum’s main network, citing sharp drops in transaction costs and faster-than-expected base-layer scaling.
🇰🇷 South Korea is expanding crypto market investigations in 2026 to crack down on price manipulation tactics like whale-driven trades and exploits during exchange outages, a push accelerated by recent exchange mishaps that exposed operational and market risks.
🇹🇷 Turkish authorities froze about $544 million in assets linked to alleged illegal betting operator Veysel Sahin, with Tether executing the block at the government’s request as part of a broader crackdown that has already seized over $1 billion in crypto-linked funds.
🇷🇺 Russia’s largest lender Sberbank is preparing to offer loans backed by cryptocurrency after piloting the country’s first bitcoin-secured loan, expanding regulated crypto finance to businesses as lawmakers work toward a full legal framework by mid-2026.
