Hyperliquid's and NEAR's native tokens fell after crypto investor Arthur Hayes said he had sold his entire positions in the assets, just days after publicly betting HYPE would outperform every other top-10 cryptocurrency by year-end.
HYPE, NEAR Drop as Arthur Hayes Exits Holdings, Touts WLD
4 June 2026 - 20:01 CEST
By Jona Jaupi
"I just dumped my entire $HYPE and $NEAR position," the former chief executive of the BitMEX crypto derivatives exchange wrote in a post on 4 Jun, giving several reasons for the move, including rising energy prices, upcoming AI company public offerings and a decision to lock in profits. He added that he would explain the decision more fully in an upcoming essay.
Hayes, who pleaded guilty in 2022 to violating the Bank Secrecy Act and who is the current CIO of family office Maelstrom, also publicly promoted Worldcoin's WLD token on X, saying he planned to hold it through the expected SpaceX initial public offering (IPO).
Hyperliquid is a decentralized perpetual futures exchange with a total value locked (TVL) of around $5.9bn, up by $1bn from April alone, according to DeFiLlama.
HYPE traded at about $67.01 as of 16:23 UTC on 4 Jun, down around 7% on the day after dropping as much as 10%, according to CoinGecko. The token's market capitalization stood at roughly $14.9bn, while 24-hour trading volume approached $1.9bn. The pullback halts a rally that had driven the token up 55% over the previous 30 days.
The decline comes amid a broader crypto market selloff. The total cryptocurrency market capitalization fell 4% over the past 24 hours to about $2.3tn. Bitcoin (BTC) continued sliding to trade 3.5% lower to $64,165, while Ether (ETH) fell 3.6% to around $1,782.
NEAR falls far
NEAR is the native token of the NEAR Protocol, a Layer 1 blockchain with a TVL of over $170mn, according to DeFiLlama. NEAR fell as low as $2.38 on 4 Jun, leaving it down 21% over the previous 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.
The token later recovered some losses to trade around $2.43, narrowing its daily decline to 16%. The drop made NEAR one of the worst-performing cryptocurrencies among top tokens by market capitalization.
The move came just four days after Hayes publicly promoted Hyperliquid's HYPE token. In a 31 May post on X, Hayes challenged Multicoin Capital co-founder Kyle Samani to a $100,000 charity bet that HYPE would outperform every other top-10 cryptocurrency by the end of the year.
Top performers
The declines represent sharp reversals for both NEAR and HYPE, which have been some of the crypto market's strongest performers in recent months.
Despite the latest selloff, the NEAR token remains up about 95% over the past month. HYPE has also been one of the crypto market's strongest performers this year, climbing 170% in 2026.
