Hyperliquid’s native token HYPE has surged 101% year-to-date while Bitcoin is down 12% over the same period, highlighting a decoupling that Wall Street is starting to pay close attention to.
HYPE’s run looks set to continue, with users of prediction market Myriad, owned by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan, seeing an 85% chance the token reaches $52 in May, up from just 14% on May 15
The token is currently trading at $51.26, less than 2% shy of the target figure, per CoinGecko data. HYPE’s divergence from BTC reflects Hyperliquid’s transformation from a crypto perpetual exchange into a multi-asset platform targeting real-world assets, pre-IPO markets, and global financial infrastructure, according to market observers. Matt Hougan, CIO of Bitwise, argued that the platform is undervalued in a tweet Monday, noting that it’s targeting the “$600 trillion global asset market.” He added that, “Hyperliquid is not a crypto app.
It’s a super app.” The market is treating Bitcoin and HYPE as two completely different trades, according to Matthew Pinnock, COO at Altura DeFi. “Bitcoin is increasingly behaving like a macro reserve asset, so price action is heavily tied to Fed rates, ETF flows, and broader liquidity conditions,” he told Decrypt. On the other hand, HYPE is being priced more like “high-growth financial infrastructure,” with the exchange “absorbing volume across perpetuals, commodities, equities, and broader tokenized macro markets at a pace the market did not expect this early.” Key Hyperliquid drivers The exponential growth can be seen in the fees generated by Hyperliquid. It has quietly become crypto’s dominant fee generator, pulling in $255 million in year-to-date revenue, which is more than the next two platforms combined, Cam Khosravi, research analyst at Bitwise, posted Monday.