Good morning Asia. This is what is making news in the markets:
Welcome to Asia Morning Briefing, a daily summary of top news during US time and an overview of market movements and analysis. For a detailed overview of the US markets, see CoinDesk’s Crypto Daybook Americas.
The upcoming $200 billion cryptocurrency valuation debate may already be taking shape, and it looks a lot like what Solana did last cycle, according to a new report from Cantor Fitzgerald, which kicks off coverage of Hyperion DeFi (HYPD) and Hyperliquid Strategies (PURR).
Cantor frames the stock as more than just passive digital asset treasury (DAT) companies. Unlike conventional DATs that simply store tokens and wait for price appreciation, both companies position themselves as yield-generating participants in the Hyperliquid ecosystem through staking, validation, and market-making activities.
That operating exposure supports a valuation thesis that treats Hyperliquid less as a speculative DeFi protocol and more as an enterprise Layer 1 platform, echoing the bullish cases that once applied to Solana.
In Cantor’s 10-year model, Hyperliquid generates over $5 billion in annual fees and is valued at a 50x multiple, implying a HYPE market cap north of $200 billion, with HYPD and PURR offering public market access to that upside through active balance sheet deployment rather than simple token escrow.
The comparison is important because it reframes how decentralized exchanges are valued. In the case of Solana, investors finally stopped treating the token as a speculative yield play and began modeling it as a financial infrastructure capable of generating long-lasting cash flows.
Cantor is making the same argument for Hyperliquid, pointing out the protocol’s fee structure, where roughly 99% of trading revenue is recycled into token buybacks, directly linking volume growth to supply reduction rather than shareholder dilution.
Cantor maintains that those fees come from an addressable market still dominated by centralized exchanges, where perpetual futures volumes surpassed $60 trillion in 2025.
Even modest equity gains from those venues translate into hundreds of billions of dollars in incremental volume and hundreds of millions in additional annual fees, anchoring Hyperliquid’s growth case in migrating existing liquidity rather than creating speculative demand.
The report also addresses growing competitive concerns, particularly around Aster, a rival DEX backed by Binance-affiliated interests that briefly surpassed Hyperliquid in monthly volume.
Cantor argues that Aster activity is heavily inflated by points-based incentives and airdrop farming, and points to unusually high volume and open interest ratios that suggest rewards-driven trading rather than directional conviction. As those incentives fade, Cantor expects liquidity to consolidate again toward places that offer deeper books, better execution and sustainable fee models.
It remains an open question whether markets will ultimately subscribe to a 50x multiple for a leverage-driven trading network, but the fact that the debate now reflects Solana’s own evolution suggests that Hyperliquid is being judged by a familiar and much more ambitious valuation standard.
Market movements:
BTC: Bitcoin was little changed near $87,572, up 0.2% in one hour and 2.0% in 24 hours, but still up 4.9% in the week and 7.8% in 30 days.
ETH: Ether traded around $2,954, rising 0.4% hourly and daily, although it underperformed over the long term with a weekly drop of 10.9% and a 30-day drop of 4.6%.
Gold: Gold is trading choppy near the top of its range, with signs of near-term exhaustion pointing to a possible pullback towards $4,200 as traders prepare for central bank decisions, even as the broader uptrend remains intact.
Nikkei 225: Asia-Pacific markets traded mixed on Wednesday, as Japan’s exports beat expectations, stocks remained mostly stable across the region and oil prices rose on fresh headlines over sanctions on Venezuela, while U.S. stocks closed lower overnight amid uncertainty over jobs data.
Elsewhere in Crypto
- US Senate Warren Calls for Trump-Linked Cryptocurrency Investigation as Market Structure Bill Delayed (CoinDesk)
- Coinbase Risks Crypto ‘Cannibalization’ With Prediction Market Boost: Mizuho (Decrypt)
