Tao Zhu, Golden Finance

Abstract: On May 21, 2026, Hyperliquid’s native token HYPE once again led the crypto market, with a 24-hour increase of 15.5%, and was trading at US$57.72 as of press time. This is the first time that HYPE has exceeded US$50 since October 2025. This article sorts out the factors that have promoted HYPE to once again usher in a bright market.

It is not difficult to see from HYPE’s current rally that the market has realized that Hyperliquid is not just a decentralized exchange, but is evolving towards an on-chain financial infrastructure. HYPE's rise is the result of multiple factors such as improved revenue, agreed repurchases, increased holdings by whales and institutions, ETF listings, cooperation opportunities, and new product launches. These factors may continue to push HYPE to new price highs in the future.

1. Annualized revenue of US$1 billion, 99% of transaction costs to repurchase HYPE

On May 18, Hyperliquid issued an article: The open interest volume of RWA transactions on the Hyperliquid platform hit a new high of US$2.6 billion, twice what it was two months ago. Market demand for 24/7 on-chain trading of real-world assets continues to grow.

In this regard, Bitwise Chief Information Officer Matt Hougan said: The platform is undervalued and its target is "the global asset market with a scale of 600 trillion US dollars. Hyperliquid is not a cryptocurrency application, but a super application."

Hougan estimates Hyperliquid's annualized revenue to be between $800 million and $1 billion, and its valuation multiple based on repurchase cash flow is approximately 10 to 14 times. This valuation compares favorably with traditional financial exchanges such as Robinhood and CME Group. Hyperliquid represents a new generation of crypto projects designed to accumulate value directly for token holders. Hougan noted that 99% of the platform’s transaction fees are used to buy back HYPE tokens, further solidifying the direct link between platform registered user growth and token value.

Bitwise research analyst Cam Khosravi posted: Hyperliquid has quietly become the dominant fee provider in the cryptocurrency space, with revenue reaching $255 million so far this year, more than the second and third-ranked platforms combined.

It accounts for approximately one-third of the total revenue of the top ten protocols. Almost all of this revenue comes from perpetual contract trading fees, about 97% of which is returned to HYPE holders through automated open market buybacks. The platform currently accounts for 43% of all on-chain transaction fees, which is approximately $11 million per week. Significantly better than Ethereum’s 13% ($3 million per week) and Solana’s 10% ($2 million per week).

According to Tokenomics: HyperLiquid generated $1.3 billion in total revenue from December 2024 to May 2026 (a total of 512 days), of which $1.2 billion was net revenue. This $1.2 billion goes to HYPE token holders. The main uses of its tokens include network security, staking rewards, staking permissions, fee discounts, tiers, gas tokens, service payments and delegation. Its average daily gross revenue during the reporting period was approximately $2.5 million.

High revenue and high buybacks mean HYPE buying demand will continue to strengthen as long as Hyperliquid's trading volume continues to grow. It has completely surpassed the rising logic of ordinary cryptocurrencies.

In the current market, this model of real income and real repurchase is becoming the core reason for fund repricing of HYPE.

2. Giant whales and institutions continue to increase investment

On May 18, it was reported that Lookonchain’s on-chain wallet associated with the venture capital company a16z has quietly accumulated 2.11 million HYPE tokens since April 14, worth approximately US$90.87 million.

According to on-chain analyst Ai Ai (@ai_9684xtpa) monitoring, a16z (@a16zcrypto) may have become the sixth largest entity holding HYPE, and may be the largest external holding institution when the top five are all Hype’s own ecosystem. Data shows that a16z started a large-scale hoarding mode in August 2025, accumulating a total of 9.18 million HYPE (approximately US$356 million), with an average price of US$38.77. After deducting the portion transferred to exchanges and market makers, there are still 8.844 million HYPE remaining, which are scattered and stored in dozens of addresses.

Going back further, at the end of April, "Hyperliquid's largest multi-leader" opened a long order of 99,000 ETH at a price of US$2,270, and then added two small-scale positions, bringing the total long position of ETH to 114,000 ETH.

On April 10, the on-chain tracker discovered that a new wallet (0x96eb…) deposited 5 million USDC to Hyperliquid and immediately used the funds to purchase 59,239 HYPE tokens, worth approximately $2.39 million. AMBCrypto’s analysis notes that the wallet purchased at a price close to $40 and quickly took a profit after HYPE price broke through that level, indicating that the purchase was a well-thought-out accumulation strategy rather than a speculative purchase. For the HYPE token, which has a relatively limited circulation, such a large one-day buy would have a significant impact on the order book, especially if other players already hold bullish positions and tend to follow large inflows rather than trade against the trend.

This situation of buying by giant whales and institutions is an important indicator of HYPE price changes, because HYPE’s current circulation is not large, and the protocol itself is constantly repurchasing and destroying it. Therefore, when institutions continue to buy, whales lock up their positions for a long time, and agreements continue to repurchase, there will be less and less circulating HYPE in the market, and eventually there will be a surge in HYPE.

3. “HYPE” ETF is listed

21shares launched the 21shares Hyperliquid ETF (NASDAQ: THYP) on May 12, offering U.S. investors spot exposure to HYPE with staking rewards. The ETF saw $1.8 million in trading volume and $1.2 million in net inflows on its first day of trading.

Bitwise’s BHYP ETF was officially listed for trading on the New York Stock Exchange on May 15. BHYP offers more than just passive investing opportunities. Bitwise has also committed 10% of BHYP management fees to purchase HYPE tokens and bring them onto its own balance sheet, which are then staked. This effectively converted inflows into the ETF into structural buying pressure on the HYPE token. For example, after Bitwise announced it would add HYPE to its balance sheet and use a portion of BHYP management fees to accumulate HYPE tokens, HYPE rose by more than 4% in 24 hours and approached the $50 mark, consistent with Hyperliquid's own buyback model. This also means that the larger the ETF, the stronger the long-term buying interest in HYPE.

In addition, according to Farside statistics, the spot HYPE ETF had a net inflow of US$25.5 million on Wednesday, much higher than Tuesday's US$11 million and Monday's US$4.4 million. Since the launch of this type of ETF, the cumulative net inflow in the past seven trading days has reached US$54 million.

HYPE’s valuation logic has completely changed due to its move to traditional finance.

4. Hyperliquid turns to Coinbase and USDC

On May 14, Hyperliquid announced an agreement that will change its ecological landscape: Coinbase will become the official treasury deployer of USDC on Hyperliquid, and Circle will be responsible for the technical layer infrastructure.

The AQAv2 framework ends the liquidity separation between USDH and USDC and redirects reserve income back to the Hyperliquid protocol for HYPE holders' income, protocol repurchase and ecological funds - while enjoying the benefits generated by a larger supply base than USDH. In other words, Hyperliquid gave up part of its stablecoin dominance, but in exchange for a deeper interest binding with USDC.

Under the AQAv2 framework, Coinbase will share most of the reserve revenue generated by Hyperliquid USDC balances with the protocol itself, which represents a major shift in stablecoin economics and may force other exchanges and the DeFi ecosystem to negotiate similar revenue sharing agreements.

For details, please see "From Confrontation to Symbiosis: Why Hyperliquid Abandoned USDH and Turned to Coinbase and USDC"

5. Pre-IPO and tokenization of everything

On May 17, Trade.xyz purchased the SPCX code on HIP-3, and on May 18, SpaceX’s Pre-IPO perpetual contract was officially launched.

For details, please see "After Cerebras is SpaceX, understand the Trade.xyz that detonated the Pre-IPO contract"

The launch of SPCX has once again attracted a lot of attention to Hyperliquid: this model can bypass the traditional securities system, and users do not need to actually hold SpaceX equity, but only need to predict the transaction price. The market generally believes that the Pre-IPO model may become Hyperliquid's most imaginative new growth point in the future.

Hyperliquid’s hot topics aren’t just cryptocurrency trading pairs, but also crude oil, silver, and the S&P 500. In October 2025, Hyperliquid carried out an important HIP‑3 upgrade: allowing anyone to stake 500,000 HYPE and deploy their own permissionless perpetual contract market on Hyperliquid. Traders can now go long or short on crude oil, gold, silver and index futures, with all trades settled on-chain and available 24/7.

Looking back at the violent fluctuations of the Strait of Hormuz crisis in early March, the trading volume of the WTI crude oil perpetual contract exceeded US$5 billion within 72 hours. Weekend crude oil trading volume even exceeded $1.4 billion on some days. The silver perpetual contract’s daily trading volume peaked at $4.67 billion on weekdays.

Andri Fauzan Adziima, director of research at Bitrue Research Institute, attributes HYPE’s outperformance to tokenized factors, including the S&P 500, oil and commodities, which have grown significantly against the backdrop of geopolitical turmoil in the past few weeks. "This TradFi rotation and permissionless market creation gives HYPE its own independent demand engine."

Altura DeFi chief operating officer Matthew Pinnock said: HYPE is priced more like a "high-growth financial infrastructure" and the exchange has "absorbed trading volume in perpetual contracts, commodities, stocks and the broader tokenized macro market at a rate that the market had not previously anticipated."

6. What is the future of HYPE?

• BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes believes: HYPE is getting closer to hitting a record high, and the $150 target is closer than before.
  

• Adziima, Head of Research at Bitrue Research Institute: The momentum will continue and the token price will reach $55-$65, driven by “RWA upside momentum and ETF inflows.” His long-term vision is that Hyperliquid will be built into a "decentralized super application" for global assets, with "billions of dollars in annual revenue potential."

• Daniel Cheung, co-founder of Synracy Capital, believes: I think people still seriously underestimate the upside potential of HYPE. Currently, HYPE's circulating market capitalization is only about $13 billion, while most other crypto exchanges have market capitalizations approaching $80 billion, and TradFi's market capitalization is even higher, so HYPE's valuation still appears low.
  

• In the Reddit community, some people believe that if Hyperliquid eventually becomes a mainstream financial trading platform on the chain and truly takes part of the traditional derivatives market share, then HYPE's long-term market value may enter the "hundreds of billions of dollars" level. The corresponding price is$200 in the medium term and over $1,000 in the long term.