Viewpoint: After AI acceleration and the depreciation of the U.S. dollar, you should hold more HYPE
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Viewpoint: After AI acceleration and the depreciation of the U.S. dollar, you should hold more HYPE
Hyperliquid is one of the rare investable assets in the crypto world that combines genuine revenue, no pressure from venture capital token unlocks, and a deep product moat; its on-chain order book is steadily capturing CEX market share through an irreplicable structural advantage.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Pavel Paramonov / Hazeflow
Compiled by TechFlow
TechFlow Intro: While everyone talks about AI agents and Mac Mini, this article asks three more fundamental questions: If AI produces everything, what retains value? If the dollar rapidly depreciates, what’s worth investing in? And if both happen simultaneously, what should you buy? The answer is BTC and HYPE. Hyperliquid raised zero VC funding, built a fully on-chain order book to directly compete with Binance, and now accounts for 13.6% of Binance’s trading volume—making it one of the few “investable” assets in crypto.
I used to be a Hyperliquid skeptic. When I first learned about it in early 2024, I felt nothing. Just another perpetual DEX on Arbitrum (there are dozens elsewhere), riddled with centralization issues and closed-source node code.
I was even banned from Hyperliquid’s frontend because my address was flagged—I still don’t know why. I couldn’t understand why @kirbyongeo, who worked alongside me at a venture fund, was so bullish on it.
After $HYPE’s TGE, its price performance stunned me. I dug deeper to understand what made Hyperliquid different—and why users are so fiercely loyal.
After months of analysis—and other external factors I’ll cover shortly—I bought my first batch of $HYPE tokens in Q1 2026.
This article isn’t about price predictions. It’s not about how big Hyperliquid will become—or whether you should buy.
This article is about what makes Hyperliquid truly different—not just versus perpetual DEXs or CEXs, but versus nearly every other protocol in the space—and why you should at least understand it.
Hyperliquid Is One of the Few Truly “Investable” Assets in the World
In January 2026, as my entire feed flooded with openclaw, AI agents, and “how buying a Mac Mini changes your life,” I FOMOed—and asked myself three questions:
If AI manufactures everything, what retains value in the world?
If the dollar rapidly depreciates and loses purchasing power, what retains value?
If both happen simultaneously, what’s worth investing in?
Fiat is gone. Most precious metals are gone. Future oil is gone (which is why the UAE and Gulf states are building new infrastructure and seeking alternative revenue streams).
What remains long-term: crypto, metals and resources required for AI development, gold, and equities. I’m not an equity expert. Not a precious metals expert. Not even a crypto expert—but I know more than most, enabling me to form coherent arguments.
Looking at the top 100 tokens by market cap, most can be eliminated—“no use case beyond staking and governance.”
What remains: BTC, ETH, SOL, BNB, and HYPE.
Ethereum has become an ideological bubble. Its community lives detached from reality; the Ethereum Foundation ignores real-world problems, hiding behind the “100% uptime trusted settlement layer” narrative.
BNB is a strong candidate due to buybacks and burns—but to truly grasp that ecosystem, you must speak Chinese. I don’t.
Solana is an impressive, vibrant ecosystem—but it’s unclear where SOL will land long-term or what role it will play. High inflation also persists.
That leaves BTC and HYPE.
BTC needs little explanation (if you don’t believe in BTC, you don’t believe in crypto). Zooming out, many interesting protocols exist—but we seek low-risk assets with high upside potential.
But there’s much more to say about HYPE—and Hyperliquid overall.
Unlimited Upside—No Investors
Hyperliquid never raised capital—a decision I consider their single best move from day one. No investors means Jeff can do exactly what he wants. No negotiations. No fundraising cycles. No need to disclose plans externally before execution. Pure operational and decision-making freedom.
You only raise when you lack capital to launch—or need to seize urgent market opportunities. Hyperliquid needed neither.
Take Telegram: people like Jeff Yang and Pavel Durov didn’t need external capital—they earned it themselves. What about other VC “value-adds,” like advice? People like Jeff know precisely what they’re doing. They don’t need advice—or external validation—and stand firmly behind their decisions.
I’ve seen dozens of teams pressured by VCs to switch ecosystems, launch tokens prematurely, or delay product releases. Once you bring in outside capital—and extra board seats—your company stops being yours.
VCs exist to make money. Most are impatient. So keeping them out was, in my view, Hyperliquid’s smartest decision.
I haven’t even mentioned how VCs behave post-token launch—when their allocations unlock: writing rosy whitepapers while dumping millions on public markets. All of this was preemptively avoided from Day One.
$HYPE Token and Utility
Why can’t Hyperliquid and $HYPE face true competition? Because there are no investors—and no external influence.
Typical VC-backed exchanges/chains have misaligned incentives. Early investors hold large token allocations with vesting schedules—and dump relentlessly upon unlock.
Chris Burniske calls Celestia “the future of finance”—while representing Placeholder VC dumping millions of $TIA. Hundreds of similar cases exist. Some VCs, like Polychain, stay silent publicly—but still dump. In the end, 99% of products devolve into a “bandit king” game: whoever dumps first wins.
This mechanism is impossible for $HYPE—because it has no private investors. Value accrues (via buybacks) directly between protocol usage and the community/team holding tokens—no separate stakeholder class.
Why Competitors Can’t Replicate It
Well—unfortunately, most aren’t as intelligent or bold as Jeff, who earned millions independently before launching Hyperliquid.
Lighter holds no advantage over Hyperliquid (“enjoy being part of a sci-fi chain”), and Aster’s attempt to quickly overtake Hyperliquid failed—robust financial infrastructure can’t be built overnight, nor out of envy. To find protocols that might compete with Hyperliquid, look for those with ≥5 years of track record.
Some argue token incentive design, network effects, or product execution matter more than cap table structure—and that “no VC = better alignment” oversimplifies things. That may be true. Many fair-launch protocols fail; some VC-backed projects succeed. But if they succeed—why does nobody care about their tokens?
I use Uniswap and Aave daily—but why would I want to buy their tokens? To stake for more (ouroboros rewards), or vote in governance—where private investors hold majority voting power? No thanks.
With Hyperliquid—even if you never trade perpetuals—you might still want $HYPE. As I said earlier, it’s among crypto’s only truly investable tokens—thanks to countless decisions by the team that were not just smart, but courageous.
Unlimited Trading Instruments
Hyperliquid hasn’t yet integrated most trading tools—only perpetuals and binary options (prediction markets) are live. Given Hyperliquid’s infrastructure stack and the broad adoption of perpetuals, it’s strongly positioned to capture other derivatives markets.
Hyperliquid has already brought more “traditional” markets onto its platform—like precious metals and equities. Yet conventional instruments remain absent: plain vanilla call/put options.
HIP-3 attracted many traders from outside crypto. In fact, most of Hyperliquid’s current volume comes from precious metals, oil, and the S&P 500—not crypto assets. Introducing familiar tools to this new user base makes perfect sense.
No protocol has sustained options in crypto long-term: Hegic, Ribbon Finance, and Lyra all failed. Aevo gained real momentum in 2024—and was even viewed as Hyperliquid’s rival—but its order book remains off-chain.
Hyperliquid is poised to continue pulling crypto traders from Binance, Bybit, and OKX—while simultaneously attracting commodity traders from traditional exchanges—potentially dominating this segment of the options market entirely. The rationale for crypto traders shifting to Hyperliquid is obvious—and these migrations may accelerate.
But a harder question remains.
Why Would Non-Crypto Options Traders Leave Nasdaq or NYSE for Hyperliquid?
Nasdaq reportedly explores 24/5 trading—but Hyperliquid already operates 7×24. Lower fees. Instant settlement. No size limits. Reduced margin requirements. Higher capital efficiency. Non-custodial design. No geographic restrictions.
There are compelling reasons to trade identical assets on Hyperliquid instead of traditional exchanges—and beyond that, traders gain entirely new strategic possibilities on HyperCore, with genuinely powerful composability.
Unfortunately, I have no insider updates on Hyperliquid’s roadmap—but I’m confident vanilla options will arrive sooner than expected.
Team Attitude and Behavior
Hyperliquid never spent money on marketing—and crucially—never invested in building its own ecosystem. Ecosystem plays have been a decades-long scam.
Wasting investor funds on grants to “builders” who vanish once funding runs out (just like core teams often do shortly after TGE) has always struck me as foolish—and I’m glad people are finally waking up to it.
Where’s Blast’s ecosystem? Berachain’s? Movement’s? Eclipse’s? Sui’s? zkSync’s?
Anyone wanting to use Hyperliquid—or build on it—doesn’t need to talk directly to the Hyperliquid team. Prudent decisions around market creation thresholds keep spam off the network.
Hyperliquid has a world-class team—not because it hired “the best people,” but due to its management philosophy. Think Rockstar, Telegram, Valve—not Google, Meta, or Apple.
Hyperliquid embodies Peter Thiel’s “Zero to One” philosophy. Building a perpetual DEX wasn’t novel—but executing ruthlessly, caring about literally nothing else, absolutely was.
I run a research firm—we’ve never done paid marketing or advertising. So Hyperliquid’s approach resonates deeply with me. People eventually find great products—not because companies shout, but because the product is excellent—and quiet.
The Value of an On-Chain Order Book
Hyperliquid no longer sees itself competing with other perpetual DEXs—it’s now competing head-on with crypto CEXs—and major CEXs at that. That alone tells you everything you need to know.
Its trading volume ratio vs. Binance recently climbed from 8% to 13.6%, and it consistently surpasses Robinhood in volume. When traders decide where to open perpetual positions, Hyperliquid now sits squarely alongside Binance and Bybit in consideration—something unthinkable in the dYdX or GMX era.
Another key point: Hyperliquid launched post-FTX collapse—so you don’t need to convince users of self-custody benefits. They’re self-evident now.
Traders tolerated CEX custody risk because DEXs were slower, less liquid, and more expensive (gas fees eroded PnL per trade). Once execution speed and depth match Solana or rollups, the only remaining advantages of CEXs—convenience and liquidity—are precisely Hyperliquid’s domain.
Interestingly, the old “DEX vs. CEX” debate was one-sided—then shifted to “Hyperliquid vs. CEXes,” becoming intensely serious.
Paradoxically, Hyperliquid shares much with Binance. Hyperliquid mirrors how CEXs like Binance scaled: starting with spot, then expanding into futures, options, wealth products, launchpads, etc. A platform offering only perpetuals competes with other perpetual venues—but one expanding its product surface begins competing with “full-service exchanges”—a CEX stronghold.
You can learn more about Hyperliquid’s network effects here:
Hyperliquid Defies Comparison—Neither Crypto Nor Traditional Markets
Most crypto natives don’t understand interest rates—so they miss Hyperliquid’s actual value-driving mechanics. TradFi folks dismiss crypto as lacking “real” value—so they miss it too.
Hyperliquid competes on funding rates the way brokers compete on margin rates—if you offer the cheapest leverage with no trade-offs, big players use your platform.
PURR and Hyperliquid Strategies are the world’s only treasury firms with positive P&L.
Grayscale notes Hyperliquid’s business model resembles traditional exchanges—but $HYPE is a crypto asset, not corporate equity.
Though Grayscale’s $HYPE ETF is live, it’s still a derivative. The real catalyst lies in Hyperliquid potentially becoming the largest institutional players’ go-to venue for cheap leverage—if its perpetual funding rates beat alternatives, capital flows in regardless of participants’ crypto views.
Traditional valuation frameworks fail here—this product is unlike anything else. $HYPE isn’t a stock (no dividends, no equity claim, no corporate structure)—but it’s also not a “pure” speculative crypto asset decoupled from cash flow (hello, 99.9% of protocols in this space).
Unusual Combination of Architecture + Behavior
Hyperliquid adopts an open architecture—faithful to DeFi principles like transparency and self-custody—while building around a highly optimized core application proven to attract and retain users.
It’s both an open, composable protocol (like DeFi infrastructure) and a polished, sticky consumer product (like a well-run exchange app). Most projects pick one—but with Hyperliquid, you don’t have to choose.
Don’t Try to Evaluate Hyperliquid
Hyperliquid earned ~$800M in 2025—but that’s still only ~2% of total crypto perpetual trading revenue. Against the massive global traditional derivatives industry, its revenue remains negligible. If Hyperliquid’s adoption continues growing, who knows how high those numbers could climb?
Hyperliquid is:
A token behaving like a profitable, growing business
A DeFi protocol with centralized-app-level retention/UX
An independent product bridging Web2 and Web3 traders
Thus, any single comparison set—crypto-only, equity-only, or exchange-only—understates at least one dimension. Yet no benchmark or framework correctly assesses whether Hyperliquid is over- or undervalued—so form your own view or argument.
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