In this issue:

• This Week in Neo Tokyo: When $ETH Hits $3500 (by PhoenixxDown)

• HYPERLIQUIDATED! The Aftermath of On-Chain Warfare (by Flower83)

It’s been busy in Neo Tokyo this week, with much of the action covered in the Short Scoops section below. But one highlight was the Vibe Coding workshop, hosted by FireStorm and Jeff Treves; two Citizens who have put their skills to work and created games using Grok recently.

This was a Citizen-only event, so we won’t be diving into all the details. But if you’re on the outside looking in, still on the fence about joining us, take this as an example of what you’re missing out on!

S2s are pretty cheap at the moment. Just saying. See for yourself.

Vibe Coding doesn’t even require any prior coding experience to hit the ground running. Take it from Jeff:

Oh wait, what’s this? Another reason why being in Neo Tokyo isn’t just about skill-building, it’s about surrounding yourself with ambitious, hard-working people who might just become your future collaborators?

Check out this glowing testimonial from MadKingLoktra of The Kingdom:

This Week’s Neo Tokyo Content

Interlinked #73 - Ben and Cryptoetheus welcome Caesar, the co-founder of Rektech, along with their CEO, Lej. In this episode, they dive into Rektech: Next Generation Game Show and working with friends.

Rektech is known as “Web3’s craziest gameshow” where participants can compete to win prizes, such as NFTs, with the main prize in Season 1 being a Pudgy Penguin!

Market Monday #114 - No intro needed for Market Monday this week, ZeHI has you covered!

NT x Unfungible Space - Online vs IRL Tournaments, that’s the debate this week for our panel. Covering things like what fuels the hype, what falls flat, and why it matters for the future here in Web3 Gaming.

Set to kick off in just a few hours time at 4pm UTC, set your reminders/listen back here.

Short Scoops

The NT Outreach team has been making deals all over, first off with BitcoinOS: make sure you follow the steps outlined to secure your allocation:

And also for EDEN: submit your Solana wallets to secure the loot:

With many conferences fast approaching, if you have a booth and still don’t have a merch plan figured out, get in contact with Shibuya Mall, they’ll take care of things. Details below:

An update regarding Becker’s memecoin.

Have a good read for the full details, but I’ll tell you this: the official launch will kick off when ETH hits $3500.

I will not comment. You have Flower’s article still to come.

Earlier this week, Citizens attended the 5th Purg Hangout, and holders of the Sacred Writs partook in Chapter 3: The Speakeasies.

And in just a few hours, NT Plays will be hosting an event with The Forgotten Runiverse team; a magical, free-to-play, fantasy MMORPG powered by our new best friend, the mighty Ronin Network!

And, as is now tradition until the situation improves, we close out with a $BYTES bullpost:

Until next next week, citizens.

What a week, huh?

Before everyone started drawing all memes known to mankind with AI, the Hyperliquid(ated) drama was CT’s favourite obsession of the week. And, buckle up, because this week’s series of events is exciting, but also has long lasting consequences on the entire web3 space.

So, the $JELLY shitcoin saga unfolded like a badly scripted reality TV show, and now we’ve got centralized exchanges like Binance and OKX squaring off against Hyperliquid. Hyperliquid is, of course, CT’s new favourite place for degens since they migrated from Solana after the casino got shut down, and now they want to lose money on perps.

Let’s break it down, step by step, in all its chaotic glory (keeping it straight and factual) before I inevitably spiral into why this whole mess smells like a bearish dumpster fire for our beloved crypto industry. 😂

Part One: How It All Went Down

It all kicked off on March 26, 2025, when a mysterious but crafty trader (or shall we call them a market manipulator?) decided to flex some serious SIZE on Hyperliquid, a DEX that’s been presenting themselves as “decentralized,” and everyone (bagholders mostly) went along with it with little to no questions asked. Turns out they really should've been, though.

Anyway, this genius deposited $7.17 million (from Binance, of course) across three Hyperliquid accounts within a tight five-minute window (as tracked by Arkham Intelligence).

The target? A low-liquidity shitcoin called $JELLY. The trader slapped leveraged trades on it—two long positions worth $2.15M and $1.9M, and a hefty $4.1M short.

And then, proceeded to do some on-chain magic (read: price manipulation). The whale(s) pumped $JELLY hard on other external DEXs, where liquidity is thin and price volatile, effectively resulting in a short squeeze.

This left Hyperliquid’s Vault stuck in a perpetual money burning spiral as the attackers pumped $JELLY up, spiking it over 400% to $0.050 in just a few hours.

Predictably, the price skyrocketed from $0.0095 to around $0.04.

The shorts got liquidated & were too big for Hyperliquid to handle smoothly. So the HLP Vault was at one time running a potential -$12M loss, while the trader was sitting on nearly $1M in unrealized profits from the longs before anyone could blink.

Then came the CEX cavalry. Binance & OKX, sensing blood in the water, seemingly teamd up and listed $JELLY futures contracts almost immediately after the delisting (MacroCRG flagged it early).

Binance dropped USD-margined perpetuals, and OKX followed suit, capitalizing on the volatility and pushing price even higher.

The timing was impeccable, almost suspiciously so, especially since blockchain sleuth ZachXBT traced the manipulator’s funds back to Binance deposits.

It was “Panic Mode: Engaged” for Hyperliquid. In just a few hours, their validator crew (rumoured to be “6 servers on Jeff's computer” which is probably exaggerated but would be hilarious if not) simply fed the oracle a different price, nullifying all the losses.

Just. Like. That. Poof. All issues gone.

Seriously, you can't make this up. 

The so called “validators” were surely organized, since they huddled up, voted, and delisted $JELLY perpetuals faster than you can say “decentralized” and released an official statement.

They promised refunds to affected users via the Hyper Foundation, swearing the network would “grow stronger” from this mess. Meanwhile, the HLP Vault’s 24-hour PNL was still magically positive at $700k, which smells like some innovative & creative accounting - or a miracle. By March 27, $JELLY’s price had settled back to $0.020, but the reputational damage was done.

Part Two: The Aftermath, Discussions and Reactions on CT

The story is obviously one of those that causes a CT meltdown. MacroCRG called it a “pure move to bury a competitor,” comparing Binance’s play to their alleged FTX takedown.

Gracy Chen from Bitget didn’t hold back either, slamming Hyperliquid’s handling as “immature, unethical, and unprofessional,” warning it could be an “FTX 2.0” moment if they don’t fix their flaw.

Some saw it as a CEX vs. DEX showdown. Dogetoshi quipped, “Binance and OKX just declared war on DEXs”.

Others, like Crypto_McKenna, flipped it: “Hyperliquid’s validator override proves they’re not decentralized; it's centralized price fudging at its finest.”

Obviously there was no shortage of juicy memes:

Even El Risitas resurfaced. It’s been a while.

(Actually this above is quite an accurate explanation of what went down from Hyprliquid’s POV.)

Part Three: Crypto’s Ethics Dumpster Fire

This whole “HyperLiquidated debacle” is a neon sign flashing “CRYPTO IS COOKED” in big, ugly letters. Sure, the trader got their $900k bag or whatever, Binance and OKX raked in fees, and Hyperliquid dodged a full vault wipeout.

But at what cost? The series of events revealed the stinky truth beneath it all and it’s got many wondering who’s the bigger clown 🤡 here; the CEX attackers or the DEX pretenders.

First, Binance and OKX swooping in feels like a calculated hit. It’s not about innovation; it’s about PvP. If they can profit off volatility while burying a DEX, why wouldn’t they?

But on the other side… Hyperliquid? These guys actually convinced everyone they are the future, yet when things get ugly, their validators manually overrode prices and delisted $JELLY to save their skin, and acted like all of this never happened.

That’s not “DeFi” as LSDinmycoffee put it bluntly:

Nobody won, and still, this mess leaves us with big questions:

• If you can tweak the game mid-play, what’s the point of the blockchain hype? How far away are we from true “Decentralized Finance?”

• Is it okay for CEXs to weaponize volatility against DEXs for the sake of profits?

• Does this prove crypto’s still a wild west where competition means sabotage, not progress?

• Did Binance/OKX cement their dominance, or did Hyperliquid’s quick dodge expose DEXs as fragile frauds?

• What is next and who can we trust?

My thoughts? I’m bearish as hell. Send it all to zero. 📉 The hypocrisy in this industry is causing us to decay from inside.

“Build a good product,” they say, while actively attacking those that actually do so. Values that once mattered to crypto are now swapped out when it suits the projects, or protects them from massive losses.

There is no real innovation here; it’s just a zero-sum PvP landscape where we cannibalize each other for the sake of profit. The industry’s supposed to be about freedom, but all I see are power grabs and duct-taped fixes.

This is also why we won't have a “supercycle” until we get our shit together and until prices of 99% of projects are not based on hype and speculation, but actual working products.

Tell me I’m wrong.

Cya next week. 🧡

Bonus Flower83 article:

And just so we are all in the know with what else happened this week:

Bitboy got arrested

My ETH prophecy from last week is already taking effect

Elon got the most brutal ratio in the history of Twitter

Ferrari is going to raise prices by 10% just to mess with Trump’s tariffs. Also because they can.

Trump apparently thinks the European Union is a one (1) country.

Everyone launched their own stablecoin overnight.

GME announced that they will be LARPing as Saylor for a while.

Huge news for web3 gaming: Binance will list Gunzilla’s token $GUN at TGE.

XRP Arms shills are back and stronger than ever

Punks are swelling for decent $$$ again and apparently so did some ordinals

And they are also rounding up all insiders within their ranks and prosecuting them to the full extent of the law.

Oh yeah, and everyone is obsessed with morning routines now:

And lastly, huge news everyone missed among the noise but is actually significant (and dare I say bullish for eth) no more approvals on token when trading.

All content from Neo Tokyo News is for entertainment purposes only, is not financial advice, and does not reflect the opinions of Neo Tokyo.

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