On Tuesday, the Hyperliquid token (HYPE) hit a new all-time high of $65, briefly propelling the cryptocurrency into the top ten by market capitalization and drawing new attention to the platform’s underlying dynamics.
Grayscale Research released a new report 24 hours later on Wednesday, explaining why Hyperliquid has performed so well so far, what has helped it expand beyond crypto trading, and what investors might be looking for next.
Hyperliquidity beyond crypto-perps
In its report, Grayscale said Hyperliquid’s scale and growth can now be compared to that of the largest crypto derivatives sites, highlighting a business that has grown alongside its open interest and fees.
The company noted that Hyperliquid had processed approximately $2.9 trillion in perpetual futures (perps) volume in 2025 and currently held approximately $7 billion in open interest.
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The asset manager also ranked Hyperliquide third or fourth. perpetual futures exchange by open interest, highlighting that volume, open interest, fees and market awareness have increased together even as the platform has begun to expand from crypto-native products to a wider range of tradable exposures.
One of the key themes from Grayscale was that Hyperliquid did not limit its expansion to traditional crypto players. Instead, it evolved into a broader set of products through an open architecture approach.
The success of HIP-3 and HIP-4
New features are introduced via Hyperliquid Improvement Proposals (HIPs), and these products are built and deployed by third-party teams rather than the original Hyperliquid creators.
Grayscale highlighted HIP-3 as a major step in this direction. HIP-3 allows builders to launch new perpetual markets, including non-crypto assets such as stocks, commodities and index-based products.
Grayscale said volume data supports this view. During the February silver peak, HIP-3 silver perps reportedly reached over $4 billion in daily volume. As of a February 5, 2026 window, HIP-3 silver asset volume was trading at approximately 1% of COMEX notional silver volume.
Building on this momentum, Grayscale highlighted HIP-4, which it describes as extending the model to outcomes markets – binary options that resemble predictive market contracts.
4 reasons behind the growth of the platform
Along with its product expansion, Grayscale said Hyperliquid was able to stand out for several reasons. The report focused on the product, arguing that Hyperliquid was built around perpetual trading use cases rather than treating trading as one feature among many.
In Grayscale’s view, this has allowed the platform to prioritize what active traders are most interested in: fast order entry, reliable execution, clear and readable positions, and an exchange-like interface that looks familiar.
The company also focused on distribution, arguing that the builder code and interface approach gives third parties a reason to direct users to the same liquidity base instead of fragmenting attention between separate sites.
Grayscale added that the economics have already been significant; he cited Phantom integration of Hyperliquid perps via Builder Codes, noting that Phantom earned approximately $19.7 million from routed trading fees.
Finally, Hyperliquid’s token distribution was structured to reward platform users rather than venture capitalists or pre-screened insiders, which Grayscale believes helped create a different type of early ownership.
Main risks for HYPE
Even with an optimistic growth narrative, Grayscale ended up warning investors to consider both familiar crypto risks and some platform-specific concerns. He said Annualized price volatility of HYPE is around 80%, about 40 percentage points higher than Bitcoin.
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He added that Hyperliquid’s growth potential depends in part on changes to financial services regulations in the United States, which could open up access to a broader set of users. Without these changes, Grayscale warned that the platform’s expansion could end up being limited primarily to other jurisdictions, which could limit its growth.
Nonetheless, the report’s final message was that if Hyperliquid continues to perform well, retains and grows its community, and benefits from regulatory developments that make broader adoption possible, it could become a “financial services juggernaut.”
Featured image created with OpenArt; chart from TradingView.com
