When the cryptocurrency market emerged more than a decade ago, its proponents presented it as “us versus them”: a rebellious fight against Wall Street and traditional markets.
Over time, the great divide was slowly closed with the debut of popular traditional instruments like cryptocurrency-linked futures and ETFs, and now the two worlds have merged into decentralized platforms.
The market rally in the HYPE token of Hyperliquid, a decentralized exchange, reflects just that, according to Hyunsu Jung, CEO of Nasdaq-listed Hyperion DeFi. It is the first publicly traded US company to build a long-term strategic treasury of HYPE tokens. At the end of last year, it held over 1.4 million HYPE tokens.
HYPE token is up more than 30% to $33 this week, leaving bitcoin behind ether and other major tokens far behind. Bitcoin is up just 1.84%, while the CoinDesk 20 Index, a broader market indicator, has gained more than 4%, according to data from CoinDesk.
“This is a story of the convergence of all asset classes under the megatrend of tokenization in an increasingly financialized world, something that is increasingly happening in Hyperliquid,” Hyunsu said, explaining HYPE’s rally.
While Hyperliquid began as a decentralized exchange for trading cryptocurrency-linked perpetual futures, it has since expanded its product suite to include trading of stock indices, stocks, commodities, and major fiat currency pairs.
This change stems from the Hyperliquid Improvement Proposal-3 (HIP-3), launched in October 2025, which allows anyone who stakes 500,000 HYPE tokens to freely create markets for non-crypto assets.
The timing couldn’t have been better, as traditional assets, especially gold and silver, have gone crazy since late 2025, generating huge trading volumes and fees in the Hyperliquid markets for those assets. The silver-USDC market has recorded a trading volume of over $1 billion in the last 24 hours alone. The numbers look even more impressive on a broader scale.
“In just 3 months of this update, Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 markets have captured over $1 billion in open interest, ~$25 billion in total trading volume, and over $3 million in total fees, all transparently on-chain,” Hyunsu noted. “Users around the world can now access and trade stocks (for example, those in countries that were unable to access US stocks) or gain exposure to the incredible metals trading over the past few months.”
The fee boom translates into higher prices for HYPE through a token burning mechanism. Hyperliquid burns HYPE based on protocol fees through an automated mechanism, and up to 97% of fee revenue is used to buy back HYPE and remove coins from circulation.
“It is a deflationary mechanism not found in any other blockchain ecosystem and an incredible structural tailwind for our treasury,” Hyunsu said.
He explained that the 24/7 availability of traditional markets on Hyperliquid allows traders to react to global events, helping to achieve fairer spot prices outside of regular hours and even on weekends when traditional markets are closed.
