Hyperliquid has damaged ranks with the broader digital asset market, posting an enormous double-digit rally whereas Bitcoin and different main altcoins like XRP undergo from the bear market.
In response to CryptoSlate’s knowledge, Hyperliquid’s HYPE is likely one of the crypto market’s prime performers over the previous two weeks, leaping roughly 71% to a excessive of $35, its highest value since final December.
This value efficiency displays crypto merchants’ optimistic sentiment concerning the protocol’s potential to develop product choices.
Notably, the worth motion stands in sharp distinction to the ugly tape elsewhere. Over the previous weeks, a pointy risk-off wave has hit corners of the market, and the harm hasn’t been remoted to digital property.
The identical macro tremors that knocked crypto decrease additionally jolted valuable metals and different danger trades, wiping round $6 trillion over the primary few weeks of 2026.
And but in the midst of that big market-wide purple display screen, HYPE is performing like a unique animal, with US buyers driving its uptrend.
The best rationalization that capital is simply rotating into a powerful chart misses what makes this transfer structurally fascinating.
Primarily, HYPE is more and more buying and selling much less like a generic altcoin and extra like an exchange-linked asset whose demand can rise as a result of markets get messy. In a risk-off regime, most tokens are punished for being “danger.”
Nonetheless, venues that monetize volatility can see fundamentals enhance when everybody else’s fundamentals degrade.
Hyperliquid’s volatility income
Hyperliquid’s core product is perpetual futures. When volatility spikes, perpetual quantity usually rises as merchants hedge, speculate, rotate throughout property, and are liquidated extra continuously.
That exercise throws off charges, and Hyperliquid’s design hyperlinks these charges again to token demand in a direct, mechanical loop.
On DefiLlama, Hyperliquid Perps reveals a 30-day perp quantity of $216.286 billion and a 24-hour perp quantity of $11.778 billion.
This exercise is accompanied by 30-day income of $68.42 million and annualized income of $834.7 million. On the identical time, open curiosity on the platform at present exceeds $6 billion.
These numbers matter due to the “what occurs subsequent” step. DefiLlama’s methodology notes that 99% of charges go to an Help Fund for purchasing HYPE tokens, excluding builder charges.
In different phrases, extra buying and selling exercise can translate into extra purchase strain for the token, which is constructed into the plumbing quite than depending on sentiment.
That’s the core purpose HYPE can look like the “sole winner” throughout broad drawdowns. If worry will increase turnover, the protocol’s cashflow loop can strengthen even whereas the remainder of the market deleverages.
For context, knowledge from ASXN present that the day by day HYPE buyback price climbed to almost $4 million earlier this month, the very best stage since final November. When expanded to the previous month, the speed exceeded $55 million.
Two takeaways fall out of that set of numbers.
First, buyback depth has accelerated not too long ago. The 30-day determine implies a mean of roughly $1.86 million per day, whereas the 7-day determine implies $2.85 million per day, per a market that has grow to be extra lively and extra risky.
Second, the buybacks have been executed at progressively larger common costs over shorter home windows ($25.81 over 30 days versus $31.36 over the previous 24 hours), which inserts the broader level that HYPE demand is tightening as exercise rises.
Hyperliquid is widening the volatility floor space
Hyperliquid’s important value features even have robust product catalysts which might be straightforward to miss when you solely monitor value.
The protocol is successfully widening the “volatility floor space” it might seize by transferring past normal crypto property into Actual World Belongings (RWAs) and permissionless markets, a technique unlocked by its latest HIP-3 improve.
HIP-3 made Hyperliquid extra permissionless on listings, permitting the protocol to help builder-deployed perpetual markets. These deployers should preserve 500,000 staked HYPE and are topic to slashing by way of a validator vote within the occasion of malicious operation.
That stake requirement serves as a direct token sink and imposes a “value of entry” for builders looking for to quickly checklist markets.
This infrastructure enabled the platform’s speedy enlargement into commodities. Milk Street, a crypto commentary platform, famous that this pattern deserves far more consideration than it’s getting.
The agency attributed HYPE’s rally to this integration of RWAs, noting that Hyperliquid has captured 2% of the world’s main silver market regardless of itemizing the metallic roughly 30 days in the past.
Milk Street described this quantity as “INSANE,” emphasizing that silver buying and selling quantity signifies that the HYPE token can thrive quite than merely survive the market downturn.
Knowledge from Flowscan present that cumulative open curiosity throughout HIP-3 DEXs has exceeded $28 billion.
New competitor towards Polymarket?
In the meantime, the latest narrative tailwind is HIP-4, which introduces outcome-style, event-based markets.
Hyperliquid said that HIP-4 will introduce totally collateralized contracts that settle inside mounted ranges. These are positioned as prediction-market-like devices and limited-risk, options-style constructions designed to keep away from margin calls and liquidation cascades.
In response to the agency:
“Outcomes carry non-linearity, dated contracts, and another type of by-product buying and selling that doesn’t contain leverage or liquidations. The result primitive expands the expressivity of HyperCore, whereas composing with different primitives akin to portfolio margin and the HyperEVM.”
Knowledge from Santiment signifies that the group seems to be hyped about Hyperliquid rolling out HIP-4. The agency famous that latest value motion means that neighborhood expectations relating to new derivatives and prediction markets might appeal to extra quantity.
Notably, discussions of HIP-4 have additionally included comparisons with present prediction platforms.
DeFi analyst Ignas stated Hyperliquid’s HIP-4 is notable as a result of if outcomes compose with perps, a dealer can lengthy ETH and purchase an ‘ETH under $2,000′ end result as a hedge, inflicting their margin to drop as a result of the positions offset one another.
In response to him, rivals akin to Polymarket and Kalshi can not do that.
Moreover, he famous that Hyperliquid’s permissionless deployment might confer benefits, because the platform permits anybody to create markets, whereas upcoming rivals akin to Polymarket don’t help this function.
HYPE faces an impending headwind
Regardless of the bullish structural arguments, HYPE faces a big take a look at this week.
Knowledge from Tokenomist signifies that the following Hyperliquid unlock is scheduled for Feb. 6 and can launch 9.92 million HYPE to core contributors, which is roughly $335 million at latest costs.
That is the place the “mechanical bid” narrative meets actual market construction. If Hyperliquid Perps generates roughly $68.42 million in 30-day income, the unlock’s notional worth is roughly 4.9 instances the month-to-month run price.
That doesn’t imply the buyback loop can not deal with it. It means the trail issues. If unlocked holders promote aggressively and shortly, the market can hole down even with regular buybacks, particularly if broader danger urge for food stays weak.
Nonetheless, if promoting is staggered or volatility retains volumes elevated, buybacks can act as a stabilizer, turning “unlock worry” right into a buy-the-dip setup for merchants.
But when the broader market volatility collapses because the macroeconomic backdrop calms and merchants step away, the buyback yield declines, and HYPE begins buying and selling extra like an ordinary danger asset once more.