Hyperliquid is the “1,000 pound gorilla in the room” leading year-to-date market gains amid conflict in the Middle East

Hyperliquid has been moving in the opposite direction of the crypto industry, rising since the beginning of 2026 as bitcoin, ethereum, XRP, solana, and dogecoin have fallen. 

hype, the native token for the perpetual futures blockchain that does not close shop, has gained 54% year to date, making Hyperion DeFi and Hyperliquid Strategies the only digital asset treasury firms in profit, data analytics firm Artemis found.  

“Hyperliquid is the 1,000 pound gorilla in the room. It’s tearing up what we thought was possible for crypto, building something much bigger and much faster than most of the industry,” according to Bitwise research analyst Danny Nelson.

Yesterday, S&P Dow Jones Indices announced it was officially licensing the most tracked stock index for a derivative contract on the blockchain network, which means users can use up to 50x leverage to trade the S&P 500. 

Mario Stefanidis, fundamental research lead at Artemis, said the announcement is a substantial change beyond just Hyperliquid as equity markets are transitioning to 24/7/365 trading. “The stock market is open for regular trading hours only about 19% of the year, so this is a huge shift,” Stefanidis told Sherwood News.

“Vibes-wise, there’s no token in crypto right now quite like HYPE,” Nelson said. “It leveraged the Middle East crisis into a win by providing a service traders didn’t know they needed.”

He cited the October launch of HIP-3, the permissionless perpetuals markets that trade oil, gold, silver, and gas. “These markets are stickier than your average crypto perps market. Only 27% of crypto perps traders stick around past month three, but 64% of Hyperliquid’s commodities traders stay engaged,” Nelson continued. 

As of Thursday afternoon, the perpetual futures contracts for West Texas Intermediate crude oil, Brent crude oil, and silver had a combined trading volume of $2.3 billion, placing them among the top 5 contracts on Hyperliquid by 24-hour trading volume. Gold has $232.6 million in volume, ninth-highest on the platform, data sourced from the venue’s web interface shows.

“I think this high retention rate gives credence to HYPE’s $40 billion valuation… If Hyperliquid can carry its success through into calmer markets, I believe it will continue to grow,” Nelson said.

Hyperliquid’s token performance normally shows a high correlation to the protocol’s revenue stemming from trading fees on its decentralized perpetual and spot exchange, per Stefanidis.

“However, since the peak in February, revenues have declined -34% from ~$770mm to ~$510mm on a 30D annualized basis, while price has increased +40% from $30 to $42 [yesterday],” Stefanidis stated. “This divergence suggests the market is no longer pricing HYPE purely as a cash-flow asset, but rather as a growth asset with significant optionality,” he argued.