On Tuesday, the Hyperliquid token (HYPE) surged to a new all-time high of $65, briefly propelling the cryptocurrency into the top ten by market capitalization and drawing fresh attention to the platform’s underlying momentum.
Grayscale Research released a new report 24 hours later on Wednesday, breaking down why Hyperliquid has worked so well so far, what has helped it expand beyond crypto trading, and what investors may look for next.
Hyperliquid Beyond Crypto Perps
In its report, Grayscale said Hyperliquid’s scale and growth can now be compared with the largest crypto derivatives venues, pointing to activity that has grown alongside its open interest and fees.
The firm noted that Hyperliquid handled about $2.9 trillion in perpetual futures (perps) volume in 2025 and currently holds roughly $7 billion in open interest.
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The asset manager also ranked Hyperliquid as the third or fourth-largest perpetual futures exchange by open interest, emphasizing that volume, open interest, fees, and market awareness have risen together even as the platform has started expanding from crypto-native products into a wider range of tradable exposures.
One of Grayscale’s key themes was that Hyperliquid hasn’t limited its expansion to traditional crypto perps. Instead, it has moved toward a broader set of products through an open architecture approach.
HIP-3 And HIP-4’s Success
New functionality is introduced via Hyperliquid Improvement Proposals (HIPs), and those products are built and deployed by third-party teams rather than by Hyperliquid’s original creators.
Grayscale highlighted HIP-3 as a major step in this direction. HIP-3 enables builders to launch new perpetual markets, including non-crypto assets such as stocks, commodities, and index-based products.
Grayscale said the volume data support that view. During the February silver spike, silver HIP-3 perps reportedly reached more than $4 billion in daily volume. In a window on February 5, 2026, HIP-3 silver perp volume traded at roughly 1% of COMEX’s silver notional volume.
Building on that momentum, Grayscale pointed to HIP-4, which it described as extending the model to outcome markets—binary options that resemble prediction-market contracts.
4 Reasons Behind The Platform’s Growth
Alongside its product expansion, Grayscale said there are several reasons Hyperliquid has been able to stand out. The report emphasized product focus, arguing that Hyperliquid was built around the perpetuals trading use case rather than treating trading as one feature among many.
In Grayscale’s view, that allowed the platform to prioritize what active traders care about most: fast order entry, reliable execution, clear and readable positions, and an exchange-style interface that feels familiar.
The firm also highlighted distribution, arguing that the builder-code and frontend approach gives third parties a reason to route users into the same liquidity base instead of fragmenting attention across separate venues.
Grayscale added that the economics have already been meaningful; it cited Phantom’s integration of Hyperliquid perps through builder codes, noting Phantom has earned roughly $19.7 million from routed trading fees.
Lastly, Hyperliquid’s token distribution was structured to reward platform users rather than venture investors or pre-selected insiders, which Grayscale said helped build a different kind of early ownership.
Key Risks For HYPE
Even with the optimistic growth narrative, Grayscale ended by warning investors to consider both familiar crypto risks and some platform-specific concerns. It said HYPE’s annualized price volatility is about 80%, roughly 40 percentage points higher than Bitcoin.
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It added that Hyperliquid’s growth potential partly depends on changes to United States financial services regulation that could open access to a broader set of users. Without those shifts, Grayscale warned the platform’s expansion may end up being limited mostly to other jurisdictions, potentially capping how far it can grow.
Still, the report’s concluding message was that if Hyperliquid continues executing well, retains and grows its community, and benefits from regulatory developments that make broader adoption possible, it could become a “financial services juggernaut.”
Featured image created with OpenArt; chart from TradingView.com
