Kyle’s Hyperliquid Take Sparks Debate, “ 孤山银行 ” Goes Live — What Global Crypto Is Talking About Today?
Kyle’s Hyperliquid Take Sparks Debate, “ 孤山银行 ” Goes Live — What Global Crypto Is Talking About Today?
Published: February 9, 2026
Author: BlockBeats Editorial Team
Editor: BlockBeats Editorial Desk
Over the past 24 hours, global crypto conversations have converged on a familiar fault line: the industry’s “route war” between pure finance and broader Web3 narratives, and the recurring trust crisis that surfaces whenever leverage, market structure, and opaque incentives collide.
Three threads, in particular, dominated timelines:
- “Should crypto return to pure financial applications?” — a debate reignited by renewed skepticism toward consumer-facing “metas,” and a push to re-center on settlement, trading, and capital formation.
- Hyperliquid vs. the VC camp — catalyzed by a controversial critique from Kyle Samani and the broader question of what “credible neutrality” should mean in practice.
- Market structure distrust — especially around liquidation visibility, market-making incentives, and whether users can truly verify fairness across venues.
Meanwhile, on the “build” side, Solana’s ecosystem continues to blend two of 2025’s strongest currents — AI agents and institutional integration — creating a new kind of onchain “distribution + execution” stack for users and developers.
Below is a structured read on what matters, what’s noise, and what to watch next.
1) The Route War: “Crypto as Finance” vs. “Crypto as Everything”
Every cycle produces its own slogans, but the underlying disagreement hasn’t changed:
- One side argues that crypto’s strongest product-market fit is finance: payments, trading, settlement, and programmable capital.
- The other side argues crypto is an internet-native coordination layer, where finance is only one category among identity, social, gaming, AI, and governance.
This week’s twist is that the “finance-first” argument is no longer just ideology — it’s increasingly institutional. The more traditional players experiment with tokenized cash-like products and compliant rails, the more the conversation shifts toward what can scale with reliability.
A good example is the continued expansion of tokenized money-market exposure across chains, including Solana, highlighted by coverage of BlackRock’s BUIDL expansion. See: CoinDesk’s report on BUIDL expanding to Solana.
Why it matters: If “crypto as finance” wins narrative share, the market tends to reward:
- Infrastructure that improves execution, transparency, and risk controls
- Stablecoin settlement and onchain credit primitives
- Compliance-compatible tokenization and distribution rails
But it also increases scrutiny on the systems that already look like finance — especially high-leverage trading.
2) Kyle vs. Hyperliquid: The Real Issue Isn’t One Opinion — It’s Governance and Trust
The controversy flared after Kyle Samani publicly criticized Hyperliquid in a way that many saw as unusually direct — especially given broader market chatter about strategic positioning and token exposure. Reporting that captured the backlash and timing includes: BeInCrypto’s coverage of Samani’s criticism and the surrounding dispute.
Regardless of where you land on the personality-driven debate, the discussion quickly moved from “who said what” to “what kind of market should onchain trading become?”
The two competing mental models
Model A: Onchain perps as public infrastructure
- Users expect transparent rules, predictable liquidations, and verifiable outcomes.
- The product is judged like a protocol, not a company.
Model B: Onchain perps as a high-performance venue
- Users optimize for liquidity and uptime.
- Governance, token distribution, and relationships matter less than performance — until something breaks.
Hyperliquid sits at the center of this tension because it’s often discussed as both: a high-performance onchain venue and a cultural reaction to “VC-first” token launches.
What to watch next: governance clarity, risk management decisions under stress, and whether market participants treat these platforms as public goods or profit-maximizing businesses with a Web3 interface.
3) Hyperliquid’s Stress Tests: When Leverage Meets Social Consensus
Separate from discourse, Hyperliquid has faced concrete stress events that became reference points for “trust.”
One widely discussed incident: a large ETH position unwind that resulted in losses for a vault product, followed by tighter leverage and margin controls. See:
- CoinDesk: Hyperliquid loses $4M after a whale’s $200M ETH trade unwinds
- Cointelegraph: Hyperliquid ups margin requirements after $4 million liquidation loss
The bigger takeaway
In leveraged markets, “trust” isn’t only about whether funds are safe. It’s also about whether:
- liquidations are predictable,
- incentives are legible,
- and rule-changes feel principled rather than reactive.
That’s why debates about “decentralization” resurface so quickly: when money moves fast, governance becomes a risk parameter.
4) The CEX Market-Structure Question, Now Pointing Back at Onchain
A parallel narrative is growing: traders increasingly compare centralized execution (deep liquidity, opaque mechanics) with onchain execution (verifiable mechanics, often thinner liquidity).
In calmer markets, this is philosophical. In volatile markets, it becomes practical:
- How are liquidations displayed?
- Are market makers advantaged by hidden rules?
- Can users audit what happened after the fact?
Even when users still choose centralized venues for depth, the expectation of transparency is creeping in — largely because onchain systems have raised the baseline for what “verifiable” can mean.
Net effect: the industry’s credibility pressure is rising on both sides. Onchain venues are judged by resilience and neutrality; centralized venues are judged by disclosure and fairness.
5) “ 孤山银行 ” Officially Opens: Erebor and the Return of Crypto-Friendly Banking (With a Timeline Check)
What Chinese-speaking communities often shorthand as “ 孤山银行 ” refers to Erebor Bank (named after “the Lonely Mountain”).
Here, dates matter — because “open” can mean “received a charter,” “received conditional approval,” or “began serving customers.”
Key milestones (publicly reported)
- October 15, 2025: the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced conditional approval for chartering Erebor Bank. See: OCC news release on Erebor’s conditional approval.
- February 6, 2026: Reuters reported that Erebor received a U.S. national bank charter, per WSJ reporting. See: Reuters via Yahoo Finance on Erebor receiving a national bank charter.
Why this matters to crypto users (even if you never bank with them)
After the Silicon Valley Bank collapse in March 2023, many startups and crypto-adjacent businesses faced a renewed banking access bottleneck. The emergence of a crypto-oriented bank narrative signals:
- potential new fiat on/off-ramps,
- more competition in stablecoin settlement services,
- and a possible shift in how regulators interpret “digital asset activities” within banking frameworks (not necessarily friendlier, but more explicit).
For broader context on Erebor’s positioning and the politics around its approval path, see: Financial Times coverage of Erebor’s approval dynamics.
6) Solana’s 2025–2026 Blend: AI Agents + Institutional Rails
While market trust debates dominate headlines, the builder narrative remains strong — and Solana is one of the clearest places where two trends intersect:
(A) AI agents are becoming execution layers
In early 2025, “AI agent” talk in crypto shifted from memes to tooling: frameworks that can observe data, decide, and execute onchain actions.
A notable milestone was the integration of Allora’s inference layer into Solana Agent Kit tooling:
For developers who want the primary technical reference, see:
(B) Institutions are treating public chains as distribution infrastructure
Tokenized funds and RWA settlement discussions increasingly include Solana, including:
- CoinDesk: BlackRock’s BUIDL expansion to Solana
- Financial Times: R3 partnership pushing tokenization toward Solana
The strategic implication
If AI agents become a dominant user interface for DeFi, and institutional products keep landing on public chains, then wallet security and permission hygiene become even more important — because automated execution increases both speed and blast radius.
7) Practical Takeaways: How Users Can Reduce Trust Risk (Without Leaving the Market)
If today’s discourse feels like “everyone is accusing everyone,” that’s because crypto is still pricing the same core risk: counterparty ambiguity.
Here’s a checklist that maps directly to the themes above:
- Separate execution funds from long-term custody
Keep only what you need on trading venues or hot wallets; custody the rest with stronger isolation. - Assume leverage products can change rules under stress
That’s true for both centralized and onchain systems — the difference is whether you can audit the change and its rationale. - Treat “AI automation” as privileged access
If an agent can sign transactions, it’s effectively a delegated operator. Use strict limits and revocation plans. - Prefer verifiable permissions
Regularly review token approvals, session keys, and connected apps — especially if you’re experimenting across ecosystems.
Where a hardware wallet fits (and why it’s relevant here)
If you’re rotating capital between onchain perps, DeFi vaults, and emerging agent workflows, a hardware wallet can help reduce key-exposure risk by keeping private keys off internet-connected devices.
OneKey can be a sensible option for users who value self-custody and prefer a security posture aligned with onchain transparency — particularly for long-term holdings and higher-value accounts that shouldn’t share the same key environment as day-to-day execution.
Closing Thought
Kyle vs. Hyperliquid, the re-emergence of “crypto-friendly banking” via “ 孤山银行 ”, and Solana’s AI-agent momentum are all symptoms of the same deeper shift:
Crypto is maturing into finance-grade infrastructure — and the market is re-learning that trust is not a narrative, it’s a system design choice.
