Morning, fam! βοΈ The Fedβs latest household financial report just dropped, and itβs a massive reality check on real-world crypto adoption.
About 10% of U.S. adults held crypto in 2025. But 9% view it strictly as a long-term investment. Actual transactional utility is still a ghost town - only 2% used it for daily payments and a measly 1% for remittances.
Interestingly, transactional use is highest among the unbanked, proving crypto wins where legacy banking fails. But overall? America still treats crypto as digital gold, not digital cash. Scale accordingly!

Hereβs what we got for you today:
π Energy facts Wall Street wonβt tell you
β $HYPE is now up over 120% this year
β Jane Street under fire in Terra lawsuit
π₯ Burning hot takes for the road


Private Credit Belongs in the Fixed-Income Sleeve. Against Those Benchmarks, the Numbers Aren't Close.
For the trailing twelve months ending March 31, 2026:β Β·
Percent ABS: 14.6% net returns after losses
High-yield bonds: 8.9%
Leveraged loans: 6.1%
Investment-grade bonds: 4.5%
Private credit isn't an equity substitute. It belongs in the fixed-income sleeve β and against bond benchmarks, the performance gap is hard to dismiss. A collateralized loan with a fixed coupon and a defined repayment schedule fills the same portfolio role as a bond, with different terms and a different risk profile.
What you access on Percent:β
17.0% current weighted average coupon rate
93.5% of performing deals pay monthly fixed-rate coupons
Deal terms 6β24 months
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Starting at $500 $2B+ total issuance. 1,000+ deals. 60,000+ accredited investors. 0.44% lifetime net loss rate on asset-based deals.
Alternative investments are speculative. No assurance can be given that investors will receive a return of their capital. β Past performance is not indicative of future results. Benchmark indices shown for market context only and are not directly comparable to Percent's performance. Terms apply.

Governments are quietly burning through emergency global oil reserves at an alarming rate to artificially suppress energy costs. We are down to just 45 days of supply. When these backup tanks run dry, a brutal macro shock is going to slam the brakes on risk assets, and Wall Street is hoping you don't look under the hood.
In our latest deep dive, we expose the hidden plumbing connecting empty oil tanks straight to big tech stock tickers:
Why we only have a month and a half of refined product supply left, and how shipping bottlenecks are burning through the remaining reserves.
Why terrified retail investors just dumped Microsoft stock by 15% over its massive $190B AI data center budget - and why they are fundamentally misreading the game.
The exact custom prompts you can copy-paste into Claude or ChatGPT today to track inflation trends and bulletproof your personal portfolio.
The old market rules are breaking, and traditional hedges won't save you. Find out how the smart money is adapting right now. π

π THE NEW CRYPTO CASH MACHINE: WHY $HYPE SPRINTED +120% WHILE BITCOIN BLED
Today, the conversation wasnβt about $BTC ( βΌ 0.18% ) or $ETH ( βΌ 0.67% ). It was entirely about a single decentralized powerhouse that is slowly devouring global finance.
While Bitcoin slipped -11% since the start of the year, Hyperliquidβs native token, $HYPE ( β² 15.58% ), went on an absolute face-melting tear - rallying +120% to hit $56.

Wall Street has officially entered the chat, and the structural metrics behind this pump are wild.
1/ From Perp DEX to the global financial "Super App"
Hyperliquid isnβt just a place to trade 50x crypto perps anymore. It has morphed into a 24/7 financial terminal for almost every major asset class, spanning pre-IPO stocks, commodities, prediction markets, and macro indices.
The US-Iran geopolitical tension became the ultimate stress test. When traditional legacy markets closed for the weekend, capital flooded into Hyperliquid to trade S&P 500, gold, and crude oil perps.
Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan put it cleanly: "Hyperliquid is no longer just a crypto app. It's targeting a $600 trillion global asset market."
2. Wall Street rebalances: Out of XRP/SOL, into $HYPE
The big money is buying the equity proxy.
The ETF Inflows: Only seven days after launch, Bitwiseβs BHYP and 21Sharesβ THYP ETFs brought in $53.5 million in net inflows, including a single-day record of $25.5 million. Plus, Bitwise is using 10% of its management fees to buy back spot $HYPE for its balance sheet.
The Goldman Shift: Goldman Sachs just completely nuked its $XRP ( βΌ 0.01% ) and $SOL ( β² 1.19% ) ETF positions to rotate directly into $HYPE ( β² 15.58% ) this month.
3/ Tokenomic flywheel: a $255M buyback engine
Hyperliquid has generated an insane $255 million in revenue since January 2026 - more than the next two top crypto protocols combined. They command 43% of all trading fees across the entire crypto market, pulling in roughly $11 million a week.
Here is the kicker: 97% of that revenue goes straight into market buybacks of $HYPE. According to Hypurrscan, the projectβs Assistance Fund has quietly swallowed 44.41 million $HYPE (4.4% of the total supply), valued at nearly $2.5 billion. Itβs a relentless, automated supply sink.

Statistics of HYPE held in Hyperliquidβs Assistance Fund. Source: HypurrScan (21/05/2026)
π§ Legitimacy > Speculation

On Polymarket, the betting odds for $HYPE ( β² 15.58% ) hitting $62 this year have shot up to 83%. With the token sitting just shy of $58 right now, the market is aggressively pricing in the reality that Hyperliquid is out-building legacy financial infrastructure. Itβs a profitable, automated fee-generation machine that Wall Street can't ignore.
Handle your leverage with care, but don't fade the fee machine.

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π΅οΈββοΈ JANE STREET ACCUSED OF INSIDER TRADING IN TERRA COLLAPSE
The Crypto Fire team call had another massive debate today, and it revolves around the ghost that refuses to stop haunting crypto: the $40 billion collapse of Terra-Luna. Newly unsealed federal court filings from Manhattan just exposed how Jane Street - one of Wall Street's largest market makers - allegedly front-ran the entire market using a private Telegram backchannel named "Bryce's Secret."

1/ The smoking gun: "Bryceβs secret"
According to the unredacted bankruptcy estate lawsuit, Jane Streetβs "impossible" informational edge came from Bryce Pratt, a former Terraform Labs intern who jumped ship to become a full-time trader at Jane Street.
Pratt reportedly maintained a private Telegram channel with his old colleagues inside Terraform. The estate claims this backchannel allowed Jane Street to catch wind of Terraform's defensive maneuvers before anyone else. Internally, Pratt even joked that his colleagues should be "slightly pleased" about having an "informational advantage."
Here is how that "advantage" played out on-chain on May 7, 2022:
Terraform quietly withdrew $150 million in UST liquidity from Curve Finance to rebalance its peg.
Exactly 9 minutes later, a wallet now identified as Jane Streetβs dumped a massive $85 million in UST into that exact same pool, completely shattering market confidence.
Jane Street unloaded $192 million in UST near par, completely avoiding the crash, and then heavily shorted the token to scoop up another $134 million in pure profit on the way down.
2/ The cover-up & the corporate defense
It gets sketchier. When an on-chain analytics firm later messaged Jane Street saying they "made a killing," internal logs show traders panicking over how their wallets were tracked, immediately discussing how to "decommission" them.
Then, just 5 days after UST completely zeroed out, Jane Street casually offered Terraformβs Head of Research a high-paying job. He started two weeks later.
Jane Street is fighting back hard, filing a motion to dismiss and calling the lawsuit a "baseless, opportunistic attempt to extract cash to foot the bill for a fraud that Terraform itself perpetrated."
π§ The real precedent
Public postmortems spent years guessing who fired the "starting gun" on the Curve pool that triggered the $40B death spiral. Now we have a name.
This case is massive because a 2023 ruling already classified UST/Luna as securities. If this goes to a full trial, it sets a permanent legal precedent for insider trading and market manipulation on public ledgers. Sophisticated tradfi firms are being judged by the very public footprints they left on the blockchain.
Stay safe. Keep your 2FA tight (and your group chats tighter).

π₯ BURNING HOT TAKES FOR THE ROAD
The White House is finalizing an update on the U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, pushing sovereign $BTC ( βΌ 0.18% ) accumulation closer to reality. Read more
Tether bought out SoftBankβs entire $780 million stake in XXI Capital, scaling up its control over the Bitcoin treasury firm. Read more
Minnesota became the first U.S. state to ban prediction markets, sparking a federal counter-lawsuit from the Trump administration's CFTC. Read more
Don't buy the relief bounce. Analysts warn that $BTC ( βΌ 0.18% ) remains trapped in a macro downtrend despite minor local recoveries. Read more
The Fed proposed a "backdoor" payment account for crypto firms, drawing immediate and heavy fire from Wall Street banks. Read more
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π€‘ SPICY MEME

On May 22, 2010, a guy bought two pizzas for 10,000 BTC (worth $41 then), marking crypto's first real-world transaction

π SHOUTOUT FROM OUR FIRESTARTER

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β This newsletter is for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice. Traders should conduct thorough research, understand the risks, and carefully evaluate their decisions before investing in cryptocurrency.







