Hyperliquid Thrives Amid Market Uncertainty, Anticipating Major IPOs

Hyperliquid’s HYPE Token Outperforms Crypto Market Amid Pre-IPO Futures Momentum

Hyperliquid’s native token, HYPE, is bucking the broader cryptocurrency market downturn as its pre-IPO perpetual futures ecosystem gains traction ahead of a wave of technology listings.

According to CoinGecko data, HYPE was trading at $45.17 on Monday, up approximately 5% in the last 24 hours and 69% over the past year.

This divergence is linked to Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 marketplace, where traders are speculating on pre-IPO shares of companies like SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI. This represents a $120 billion volume opportunity that traditional finance currently does not offer.

Since its launch, the HIP-3 framework, which allows third-party teams to launch their own perpetual futures markets, has processed over $120 billion in total volume, according to Dune Analytics data. On April 8, HIP-3 deployers accounted for 48.1% of Hyperliquid’s total platform volume, nearing parity with the platform’s native markets.

This parity allows retail traders to access pre-IPO price exposure previously limited to institutional investors through secondary venues.

TradeXYZ, a leading HIP-3 deployer, demonstrated the model’s effectiveness by pricing Cerebras perpetuals within 3% of the AI chipmaker’s Nasdaq debut, while traditional secondary platforms were 35% off.

This discrepancy highlighted that on-chain pre-IPO markets achieved faster and more accurate price discovery than off-chain alternatives.

“For years, retail investors often entered once companies were already public and much of the upside had already played out,” Diego Martin, CEO of Yellow Capital, told Decrypt. “This feels like the beginning of a much bigger shift in who gets to participate.”

The next wave of test cases is already forming, with several high-profile IPOs scheduled for 2026.

According to Reuters, SpaceX is targeting a June IPO that could raise between $75 and $80 billion, roughly double the total raised across all 2025 IPOs combined, at a valuation of up to $1.75 trillion to $2 trillion. Anthropic and OpenAI are each considering listings that could raise $60 billion at valuations exceeding $1 trillion.

A SpaceX pre-IPO perpetual contract, SPCX, is already live on TradeXYZ with a $150 reference price, implying a valuation of approximately $1.78 trillion. The token is currently trading at $207, down roughly 10% from Monday’s $230 local peak.

Market expectations are already factoring in the scale of these listings.

On prediction market Myriad, owned by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan, users assign a 91% chance that SpaceX’s closing market cap will exceed $1.3 trillion and give Anthropic a 67% chance of going public before OpenAI.

Matthew Pinnock, COO of Altura DeFi, told Decrypt that the Cerebras market demonstrated how on-chain infrastructure can outperform traditional secondary markets in price formation. “24/7 crypto rails, leveraged positioning, and global participation can create faster consensus formation around late-stage private assets, particularly for sectors like AI where demand is heavily retail-driven and information moves quickly,” he said.

Pinnock added that the category carries significant regulatory risk and anticipates regulators will eventually scrutinize whether pre-IPO perpetual products function as unregistered securities exposure for retail traders. OpenAI and Anthropic have already cautioned investors against trading in securities tied to companies they have not authorized.

The platform’s ambitions have garnered early attention from Wall Street: Intercontinental Exchange and CME Group have reportedly urged the CFTC to address potential market integrity risks associated with Hyperliquid’s pseudonymous trading environment. The Hyperliquid Policy Center responded, arguing that the platform’s transparency is “hostile” to insider trading.

“Instead of being focused purely on digital assets, crypto infrastructure starts becoming a way for people to participate in broader financial opportunities,” Martin said. “That is a story a much larger audience can understand.”