Morning Minute: Saylor is Back to Buying – Decrypt

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. And check out our new daily news show covering all of the top stories in 5 minutes, downloadable on Apple Pod or Spotify.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors mostly flat despite Iran War progress; BTC at $62.7k
• Saylor buys $100M in BTC last week, MSTR jumps 6% and STRC +3.6%
• Tom Lee buys $214M in ETH, biggest purchase of 2026; ETH ETFs flip green
• Citrini calls Hyperliquid a buy, points to fees and buybacks
• Humanity Protocol has employee laptop compromised, H token falls 76%

💰 Saylor Is Back to Buying

Strategy bought 1,550 Bitcoin for $101 million last week at a ~$65.3k average, a return to business as usual after a 32 BTC sale triggered the firm’s worst weekly performance since November 2022.

The 1,550-coin purchase was funded through Strategy’s at-the-money share-sale program. Strategy raised $181 million from Class A common stock sales under the program between June 1 and June 7. It deployed $101 million into Bitcoin and used the remainder (~$80M) to rebuild its cash reserves, which have risen to $1B.

Last month, the company slashed those cash reserves by 61% to repurchase debt at a discount, leaving it with fewer resources to meet dividend obligations on its flagship preferred stock. JPMorgan commented on Monday: “In our opinion, a rebuilding of the company’s dollar reserves might be needed to restore confidence and reduce investor concerns that the company would sell more Bitcoin to cover dividend payments.”

The market liked the news, with MSTR rebounding 6% to $127.20 despite the additional shares sold. STRC jumped 3.69% to $96.80. BTC held at $63,500.

The jump may have been tied to STRC and MSTR shareholders voting to move the STRC dividends to semi-monthly, now set to pay out on the 15th and end of month. That change was meant to solve the issue of STRC trading under par for most of the month as traders bought it up in the 5-10 days leading up to the dividend date—now there are 2 per month.

📈 Citrini Calls Hyperliquid a Buy

Citrini Research, the firm that helped spark February’s AI-driven market scare, has named crypto exchange Hyperliquid and its HYPE token as a new “compelling” investment.

Their prior publication “2028 Global Intelligence Crisis” went viral and triggered a brief Wall Street selloff in February, and now they’re focused in the crypto sphere.

Hyperliquid has generated about $1.06 billion in annualized fees, with more than 90% of fees funneled into a buyback fund that has purchased over $2 billion of HYPE since January 2025. That buyback structure is the core of Citrini’s thesis. Citrini said HYPE stands apart from much of the crypto market because it is backed by real platform activity, and that Hyperliquid repurchases have accounted for nearly half of all token buyback activity across crypto this year by some measures. The firm cited Hyperliquid’s wide runway and significant market share left to capture.

HYPE’s value is increasingly tied to Hyperliquid’s trading volumes and revenue, and those volumes do face a looming threat. The CFTC began opening the door in the U.S. to crypto perpetual futures products that major exchanges like Coinbase and Kraken are racing to offer. And the CFTC just gave Kalshi approval for its Bitcoin perps, creating a new regulated US alternative to Hyperliquid’s offshore model.

The bull case: Hyperliquid’s composability, 24/7 real-world asset coverage, and SpaceX pre-IPO contracts give it structural advantages no regulated US venue can currently match. The bear case: if derivatives volume migrates onshore, the fee engine that powers the buyback slows. The next few months should be very telling as to which of these cases is more likely…

Sam Bankman-Fried Formally Asks Trump for a Pardon

Sam Bankman-Fried, the imprisoned founder of the collapsed crypto exchange FTX, formally applied for a pardon from President Donald Trump while serving a 25-year prison sentence for fraud and conspiracy.

FTT jumped roughly 50% intraday on the news.

SBF specifically requested a “pardon after completion of sentence,” a designation that would not result in early release but could restore certain civil rights once his full term is served. Bankman-Fried confirmed his interest in clemency during a recent FOX Business interview. “I assume that you would want a pardon from the White House?” correspondent Susan Li asked. “Absolutely,” he responded. “It would be obviously, ultimately up to the president, not up to me.”

The pardon faces longstanding opposition from Trump himself. Trump has signaled that Bankman-Fried should not expect clemency despite pardoning other high-profile crypto figures. Trump pardoned Binance co-founder CZ in October 2025 and the BitMEX co-founders, but Trump publicly rejected pardoning SBF twice in 2026, citing the scale of the $11 billion FTX fraud. So SBF probably shouldn’t get his hopes up…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are mostly flat; BTC -1% at $62.6k; ETH +1% at $1,670; SOL -1% at $66; HYPE even at $61.90
• WLD (+12%), ZEC (+7%), and JST (+5%) led top movers
• Oil -5% at $89; Gold +1% at $4,357
• Stock futures are green after Iran announced end of military operations against Israel, with the Nasdaq up 0.7%
• CME Group launched Bitcoin Volatility Index futures on Monday, letting traders bet on how much BTC will swing rather than which direction
• BlackRock-backed tokenization firm Securitize received SEC approval for its merger with Cantor Fitzgerald’s SPAC, combining Securitize’s institutional tokenization platform with Cantor’s balance sheet and distribution
• Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) published an op-ed opposing government stablecoin payments, arguing that allowing federal agencies to accept stablecoins for tax payments and government fees would enable tax evasion by making transactions harder to trace
• Sen. Angela Alsobrooks said she will not support the Clarity Act on the Senate floor without resolution of ethics provisions, specifically language preventing government officials from personally profiting from crypto markets
• The UK FCA added Hyperliquid and the Hyper Foundation to its unauthorized firms warning list on May 21, flagging them for potentially offering financial services to British consumers without authorization

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were slightly red; DOGE -1%, SHIB -2%, PEPE -1%, PENGU -3%, TRUMP -1%, BONK -2%, SPX -4%, FARTCOIN +2%
• Jotchua (+95x), Zerebro (+30%) and Pippin (+18%) led movers on Solana
• Base movers included Velvet (+23%), aeon (+15%) and Pod (+10%)

📈 Myriad Market of the Day

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• Humanity confirmed that an employee laptop was compromised and $36M in H tokens were stolen and dumped, causing H to drop by 76%

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were mostly flat; Punks even at 32.7 ETH, BAYC even at 9.15 ETH, Pudgy +4% at 4.47 ETH; Hypurr’s +3% at 272 HYPE
• DeGods (+11%) and Good Vibes (+10%) led notable top movers
• The left-facing Pudgy Penguin 1/1 sold for $250,000