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  • Nearly $12 Billion in HYPE Token Unlocks Loom Ahead: Maelstrom

Nearly $12 Billion in HYPE Token Unlocks Loom Ahead: Maelstrom

Plus: 🔙 LayerZero buys back 5% of supply, 💳 Stable adds PYUSD, 🔐 UXLINK loses $11.3M in hack, 🏛️ Quintenz delay clouds Clarity Act.

Author

Juan Aranovich
September 23, 2025

Hi! In today’s edition:

  • 🤑 HYPE unlock wave worth $12B

  • 🔄 LayerZero scoops 50M ZRO tokens

  • 💳 PayPal’s stablecoin plugs into Stable

  • 💔 UXLINK hacked for $11.3M

  • 🏛️ Washington drama delays Clarity Act

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By Tikta

Nearly $12 Billion in HYPE Token Unlocks Loom Ahead: Maelstrom 

“HYPE is about to face its first true test,” warned Lukas Ruppert in research published for Maelstrom Fund, the family office fund run by BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes.

The Maelstrom analyst flagged the 237.8 million HYPE tokens that will begin vesting linearly over 24 months starting Nov. 29. Assuming a price of $50 per token, that equates to $11.9 billion in team unlocks, or $500 million hitting the market each month.

“The problem? Buybacks at current levels can only absorb ~17%. That leaves a $410M/month supply overhang,” said Ruppert.

The latest piece of research comes less than a month after Hayes said he believed HYPE could “126x from the current levels.” At the time, HYPE was trading in a range similar to its current price.

On Monday, onchain wallet tracker Lookonchain flagged that Hayes had sold his entire $5.1 million stash of HYPE for a 20% gain.

Hayes alluded to the upcoming token unlock as the reason for the sale, saying “don’t worry 126x is still possible 2028 is a long way off.”

“Of course you were careful to post about the 126X (nonsensical) hyper bullish « analysis » before mentioning any of those concerns,” wrote X user @eldarcap.

“So that you could conveniently sell into the last leg of your popped up exit liquidity.”

LayerZero Foundation Buys Back 5% of ZRO Token Supply From Early Investors

The LayerZero Foundation said it had executed a buyback of 50 million of its native ZRO tokens from early investors, which represents 5% of the total ZRO token supply.

The buyback aims to reduce the circulating supply of ZRO, stabilize the token's price, and support the future growth of the LayerZero ecosystem.

“In addition to the a16z Crypto investment in April, this marks over ~$150m in ZRO repurchased this year. Stargate revenues continue to drive future buybacks,” said the LayerZero Foundation.

They also noted that the buyback was discretionary in nature, separate from an ongoing program related to its Stargate acquisition finalized last month.

As part of that deal, LayerZero agreed that for the first six months, 50% of Stargate's revenue generated by fees would be distributed to holders of the previously staked veSTG tokens, while the other 50% would be used to buy back and burn ZRO tokens.

Stable Integrates PayPal’s PYUSD After Strategic Investment

Bitfinex-backed Stable, a layer 1 blockchain designed for stablecoin-based payments, has integrated PayPal's USD stablecoin (PYUSD) onto its Stablechain network.

The integration follows a strategic investment made by PayPal Ventures, as the payments firm looks to expand PYUSD’s utility across blockchain ecosystems.

Stable has a close relationship with Tether and its blockchain has been specifically designed around the USDT stablecoin, which also serves as the native gas token.

“Now, with PayPal’s trust and scale, the potential of stablecoins can reach mainstream adoption faster than ever before,” said Stable in a statement.

Web3 social platform UXLINK suffered a security breach in its multi-signature wallet resulting in $11.3 million being illicitly transferred out of the platform.

Blockchain security firm Cyvers first flagged the suspicious transactions, which the firm said involved the removal of admin roles via a delegateCall function, allowing an attacker to add a new multi-sig owner and move assets. 

An hour after Cyvers’ report, the UXLINK team confirmed the breach on X and said they had been working with major centralized exchanges and decentralized exchanges to freeze deposits tied to the attacker.

UXLINK’s native token dropped 58% following the exploit, and was trading at around $0.135 as of late Monday evening.

Crypto Industry Frets That Delay in Quintenz Vote May Imperil the Clarity Act

By Jason Brett

President Donald Trump’s chosen pick to lead the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Brian Quintenz, remains in limbo largely due to a direct request from Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the billionaire founders of the Gemini crypto exchange.

Palace intrigue is dominating Washington, D.C., as to the future of Quintenz’s nomination, but the crypto industry has bigger stakes at hand than just who runs the agency. This uncertainty is coming at a time when Congress is negotiating the long-awaited Clarity Act, a critical piece of market structure legislation for the crypto sector.

And without clarity at the CFTC, could the landmark Clarity Act itself be thrown into doubt?

  • 💳 Tether-backed stablecoin chain Plasma announced it will launch a global neobank called Plasma One after its blockchain goes live this week, offering users a card to spend stablecoins directly while earning 4% cashback and over 10% interest.

  • 🧳 Changpeng Zhao’s $10 billion YZi Labs, spun out of Binance, is considering opening to outside investors as it expands its bets in crypto, biotech, and AI—despite the founder’s criminal past and recent return from prison.

  • 🇨🇳🚫 China’s securities regulator reportedly told some brokerages to stop tokenizing real-world assets in Hong Kong, signaling concerns in Beijing over the region’s rapid digital asset growth.

  • 📲 Rainbow, a crypto wallet backed by Reddit’s co-founder, said it plans to release a native RNBW token by year’s end, following upgrades like real-time pricing and derivatives trading as it competes with MetaMask.

  • 🇺🇸🇬🇧 The U.S. and U.K. created a joint taskforce to boost coordination on capital markets and crypto regulations, aiming to streamline cross-border fundraising and shape future digital asset policies together.

  • 🏦 Societe Generale’s crypto arm picked Bullish Europe to list its USD CoinVertible stablecoin, while regulatory clarity under Europe’s MiCA lets the bank move faster than in the still-murky U.S. market.

  • 📦 Strive, co-founded by ex-candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, agreed to buy Semler Scientific in an all-stock deal that combines two major Bitcoin-holding companies and reflects fast-moving consolidation in crypto treasuries.

  • ⛏️ Bitcoin miner CleanSpark secured a fresh $100 million credit line from Coinbase, backed by its Bitcoin holdings, to fund expansion without issuing new shares amid tightening mining conditions and rising operational costs.