Tldr:
- Hyperliquid generated roughly $800 million in revenue in 2025 without raising venture capital money.
- The HYPE token has reached a market capitalization of $13 billion despite the platform remaining banned in the United States
- Hyperliquid processed $2.9 trillion in perpetual futures volume during 2025 across global markets.
- Grayscale believes that HYPE is still undervalued compared to traditional exchanges.
Grayscale Research has identified Hyperliquid as a notable success story in modern digital assets. The decentralized exchange achieved revenues of about $800 million during 2025.
It has reached the eighth place in terms of the largest crypto assets by market capitalization. All of this was achieved without a single dollar of venture capital funding.
Notably, the platform remains geo-blocked in the US, but its growth trajectory has attracted serious institutional interest.
How Hyperliquid built an $800 million revenue machine without venture capital backing
Grayscale report He portrays the rise of Hyperliquid as something the digital asset industry rarely produces. The platform was publicly launched in August 2023, before Bitcoin ETPs hit US markets.
It built its foundation during a relatively quiet period for DeFi. It has been proven that this timing was deliberate and not a coincidence.
Instead of raising investment capital, Hyperliquid distributed approximately 30% of the HYPE token supply directly to early adopters. This decision has contributed to determining who owns and cares about the platform from day one.
The initial shareholder base consists of merchants, builders, and community participants. They have already used the product before they hold the token.
This funding model created a different type of consensus than most cryptocurrency projects carry. There were no timelines for booking venture capital or insider allocations to wait for the market to squeeze.
Trust, which Grayscale notes is rare in this category, has become a real competitive advantage. Users viewed Hyperliquid as a platform to build for them rather than extract value from them.
Grayscale’s report also cites product focus as a key element of the revenue story. Hyperliquid is designed specifically around perpetual futures trading. It was not a general purpose chain that supported the trading application.
This narrow focus allowed the team to prioritize exactly what active traders demand: fast order entry, deep liquidity, and reliable execution.
The platform, which geo-blocks America, ranks eighth in terms of market capitalization
Perhaps the most striking detail in Grayscale’s report is what Hyperliquid achieved while banned from entering the United States.
US users are still unable to access the platform due to regulatory ambiguity around perpetual futures and decentralized exchanges.
Despite this, HYPE carries a traded market cap of about $13 billion. This places it among the eight largest crypto assets globally by market capitalization.
Grayscale processed $2.9 trillion in perpetual futures volume through the platform through 2025. Open interest currently stands at approximately $7 billion.
This puts Hyperliquid as the third or fourth largest cryptocurrency futures exchange in terms of open interest. All of this activity came exclusively from non-US participants.
The report further notes that Hyperliquid has overtaken the native cryptocurrency markets. Through the HIP-3 framework, third-party developers can deploy perpetual contracts on traditional assets.
Oil trading volume on the platform exceeded $4 billion in a single 24-hour session on April 9, 2026. During that window, it briefly surpassed Bitcoin’s standing volume on the same platform.
Bloomberg described Hyperliquid as a 24-hour venue for leveraged commodity bets. An officially licensed perpetual contract for the S&P 500 Index is now traded on the platform every day of the week.
Silver volume reached over $4 billion per day during the February 2026 price spike. Grayscale frames these data points as evidence that Hyperliquid is evolving into a 24/7 market structure layer for real-world assets.
What comes next for Hyperliquid and the HYPE token?
Grayscale’s report identifies US regulatory clarity as the most important near-term catalyst for Hyperliquid. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has recently indicated a move toward frameworks that can accommodate perpetual look-alike products.
Coinbase, Kraken, Robinhood, and Kalshi are already gearing up for compatible crime shows. This momentum points toward a shift in market structure that could directly benefit Hyperliquid.
The HYPE token currently trades at roughly 14 times earnings over the four quarters ending in Q1 2026. Grayscale compares that to high-growth public exchanges like Robinhood and Interactive Brokers.
These companies trade at multiples ranging between 35 and 50 times earnings. This gap forms the basis of Grayscale’s view that HYPE presents a meaningful upside over time.
Fee mechanics enhance the token’s value status. About 99% of the platform’s trading fees flow into the assistance fund, which remits the fees to HYPE and burns them.
As burns continually exceed new token issuance, the circulating supply has trended downward. Grayscale draws a direct parallel with stock buyback programs in traditional stock markets.
Risks remain part of the grayscale image. HYPE carries annual price volatility near 80%, roughly 40 percentage points above Bitcoin.
The platform runs on closed source software with a more centralized verification toolkit than similar blockchain networks. Access to US markets is still conditional on regulatory decisions that have not yet reached final form.
