When the crypto market emerged more than a decade ago, its proponents pitched it as "us vs. them" – a rebel fight against Wall Street and traditional markets.
Over time, the great divide slowly closed with the debut of popular traditional instruments like futures and ETFs tied to cryptocurrencies, and now the two worlds have merged on decentralized platforms.
The market-beating rally in Hyperliquid's HYPE token, a decentralized exchange, reflects just that, according to Hyunsu Jung, CEO of Nasdaq-listed Hyperion DeFi. It's the first US publicly listed company building a long-term strategic treasury of HYPE tokens. As of late last year, it held over 1.4 million HYPE tokens.
The HYPE token has surged over 30% to $33 this week, leaving bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) and other major tokens far behind. Bitcoin has risen just 1.84%, while the CoinDesk 20 Index, a broader market gauge, has gained over 4%, according to CoinDesk data.
"This is a story of the convergence of all asset classes under the megatrend of tokenization in an increasingly financialized world - more and more of which is happening on Hyperliquid," Hyunsu said, explaining the HYPE rally.
While Hyperliquid started as a decentralized exchange for trading perpetual futures tied to cryptocurrencies, it has since expanded its product suite to include trading in equity indices, stocks, commodities, and major fiat currency pairs.
This shift stems from the Hyperliquid Improvement Proposal-3 (HIP-3), launched in October 2025, which allows anyone staking 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 bonkers since late 2025, driving huge trading volumes and fees in Hyperliquid's markets for those assets. The silver-USDC market has registered a trading volume of over $1 billion in the past 24 hours alone. The numbers look even more impressive on a broader scale.
"Within just 3 months of this upgrade, Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 markets have captured over $1B in Open Interest, ~$25B in total trading volume and over $3M in total fees, all transparently on-chain," Hyunsu noted. "Users globally are now able to access and trade equities (for example those in countries that could not access US equities) or get exposure to the incredible metals trade over the last few months."
The boom in fees translates into higher prices for HYPE via a token-burning mechanism. Hyperliquid burns HYPE based on protocol fees through an automated mechanism, with up to 97% of fee revenue used to buy back HYPE and remove coins from circulation.