On Tuesday, the Hyperliquid token (HYPE) reached a new all-time high of $65, briefly placing the cryptocurrency among the top ten by market capitalization and highlighting the platform’s ongoing momentum. Grayscale Research released a report on Wednesday analyzing the factors behind Hyperliquid’s success, its expansion beyond crypto trading, and what investors should consider moving forward.
Hyperliquid Beyond Crypto Perps
In its report, Grayscale compared Hyperliquid’s scale and growth to the largest crypto derivatives platforms, citing increasing activity alongside its open interest and fees. The firm noted that Hyperliquid processed approximately $2.9 trillion in perpetual futures (perps) volume in 2025 and currently holds roughly $7 billion in open interest.
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 in tandem as the platform has expanded beyond crypto-native products to include a wider range of tradable assets.
A key theme in Grayscale’s analysis was that Hyperliquid has not limited its expansion to traditional crypto perps, instead adopting an open architecture approach to offer a broader range of products.
HIP-3 And HIP-4’s Success
New functionality is introduced through Hyperliquid Improvement Proposals (HIPs), with third-party teams, rather than Hyperliquid’s original creators, building and deploying these products. Grayscale highlighted HIP-3 as a significant step in this direction. HIP-3 allows builders to launch new perpetual markets, including non-crypto assets like stocks, commodities, and index-based products.
Grayscale cited volume data to support this view. During the February silver price surge, silver HIP-3 perps reportedly reached over $4 billion in daily volume. On February 5, 2026, HIP-3 silver perp volume traded at approximately 1% of COMEX’s silver notional volume.
Building on this 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 identified several factors contributing to Hyperliquid’s success. 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.
Grayscale believes this focus allowed the platform to prioritize what active traders value most: fast order entry, reliable execution, clear and readable positions, and a familiar exchange-style interface.
The firm also highlighted distribution, arguing that the builder-code and frontend approach incentivizes third parties to direct users to the same liquidity base, avoiding fragmentation across separate venues.
Grayscale added that the economics have already been significant, citing Phantom’s integration of Hyperliquid perps through builder codes, with Phantom earning roughly $19.7 million from routed trading fees.
Finally, Hyperliquid’s token distribution was structured to reward platform users rather than venture investors or pre-selected insiders, which Grayscale said helped foster a different type of early ownership.
Key Risks For HYPE
Despite the positive growth narrative, Grayscale concluded by cautioning investors to consider both standard crypto risks and platform-specific concerns. It noted that HYPE’s annualized price volatility is about 80%, roughly 40 percentage points higher than Bitcoin.
It added that Hyperliquid’s growth potential partly depends on changes to United States financial services regulations that could broaden user access. Without these changes, Grayscale warned that the platform’s expansion may be limited primarily to other jurisdictions, potentially restricting its growth.
Nevertheless, the report’s concluding message was that if Hyperliquid continues to execute effectively, retains and grows its community, and benefits from regulatory developments that facilitate broader adoption, it could become a “financial services juggernaut.”
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