By: Vicky Ge Huang, The Wall Street Journal
Compiled by: Luffy, Foresight News
One Saturday in February, when hedge fund commodity trader Vala Zeinali's phone lit up with news of President Trump announcing airstrikes on Iran, he immediately opened the Hyperliquid website.
As a decentralized crypto trading platform, Hyperliquid is open 24/7, 365 days a year. Since the beginning of this year, it has become the preferred battleground for short-term traders on Wall Street. On weekends when U.S. stock markets are closed, investors can open or close positions here early, locking in profits before the stock market opens on Monday.
Back in early 2026, when predicting a possible geopolitical conflict in the Middle East, Zeinali deployed a four-figure sum into crude oil derivatives. After the airstrike news broke and oil prices surged, he closed his positions on Hyperliquid, earning a hefty 243% return.
"I was particularly grateful at the time. Typically, oil price spikes from such geopolitical news tend to retract by the time U.S. markets open on Monday," Zeinali said. "Fortunately, I was able to exit in time, and most positions were successfully cashed out."
More and more traditional finance and crypto traders are flooding into the platform, trading a vast array of assets: Bitcoin, the S&P 500, crude oil, and even pre-IPO star companies like SpaceX. They primarily trade perpetual contracts—derivatives with no expiry, tradable around the clock, and capable of amplifying gains and losses with high leverage.
Hyperliquid founder Jeff Yan, appearing at an event, stated that the platform's ultimate goal is to host all financial activity.
Hyperliquid was founded three years ago by Jeff Yan, a former quant trader at high-frequency trading firm Hudson River Trading. The FTX implosion inspired him: the crypto market urgently needed a high-performance trading system where users self-custody their assets.
"Self-custody is not some abstract academic concept; it's a user necessity," Jeff Yan said in an interview. "More users should have paid attention to this after the FTX incident. The core principle is holding your own assets."
The company behind Hyperliquid has only 11 employees. According to Blockworks Research data, the platform and its associated blockchain generated approximately $8 billion in revenue last year; the chain's native token, HYPE, has surged over 100% since its launch in late 2024, with a current market cap of about $16 billion.
The rapid rise of Hyperliquid is a microcosm of the accelerating convergence between traditional finance and crypto markets. Perpetual contracts linked to U.S. stocks and commodities have firmly captured the attention of Wall Street capital.
Recently, Eric Vishria, a general partner at venture capital firm Benchmark, shared a picture on platform X showing a banker monitoring the price of perpetual futures linked to AI chipmaker Cerebras. Earlier this year, Trade [XYZ], an authorized partner of S&P Dow Jones Indices, launched S&P 500 index perpetual products on Hyperliquid, which have also become one of the platform's popular contracts.
Significant capital is betting on pre-IPO companies. According to Hyperdash data, perpetual contracts for SpaceX have seen a cumulative trading volume of $280 million on Hyperliquid.
Currently, U.S.-based users still cannot access the platform compliantly, but the situation may be about to change. Last Friday, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) introduced a new regulatory framework allowing licensed domestic platforms to list perpetual contracts; it also approved Kalshi to list Bitcoin perpetual products, and Coinbase U.S. users can access its global perpetual products through an affiliated entity.
Perpetual contracts come with high leverage and high risk, amplifying profits and losses. For instance, on October 10 last year, when Trump suddenly announced 100% tariffs on China, markets crashed violently, with over $19 billion in leveraged positions liquidated across the market—$10 billion of that on Hyperliquid alone.
Jeff Yan stated that the actual industry losses were far higher than $19 billion. Hyperliquid was singled out in statistics only because its liquidation data is fully transparent and its system operated normally throughout the extreme volatility, while several competing platforms experienced downtime and could not function properly.
Benjamin Schiffrin, Securities Policy Director at financial watchdog Better Markets, issued a warning: "Perpetual contracts are structurally complex; even seasoned financial professionals struggle to fully grasp them. The current level of risk disclosure to retail investors is severely inadequate, creating a potentially dangerous combination."
Even with restrictions, U.S. and barred-region traders still participate via VPNs. The key attraction is that the platform requires no real-name verification, a stark contrast to the rigorous due diligence of traditional brokerages. However, the platform's user agreement explicitly prohibits U.S. users from accessing the service and forbids using VPNs to circumvent restrictions.
A clean and user-friendly interface, a rich variety of trading products, and a strong community atmosphere are other major advantages that retain users.
Geneva-based trader Pascal Lin started in late 2023 and quickly became a heavy user. What impressed him most was that users can directly provide product feedback to founder Jeff Yan and the team in the Discord community.
"The sense of participation is incredibly strong. It feels like you're building the product yourself," said Pascal, who also heads proprietary trading at ARES Capital Management, mainly trading HYPE and crude oil perpetuals. Previously, he accurately caught the crude oil bull run as prices surged from $67 per barrel to nearly $100.
He is so immersed in Hyperliquid that he even set up real-time price alerts on his Apple Watch, admitting he wouldn't recommend average traders to follow suit. "I wake up at night, open the app with one click, and check the HYPE price."
He is not the only fervent user. The platform's unique community culture is a core driver of traffic. On platform X, users habitually tag Hyperliquid at the end of posts regardless of the topic. Many users adopt the green-coated smiling cat meme, Hypurr, as their social media avatar. Beyond memes, third-party developers continuously build supporting ecosystem tools like market data trackers and dashboards.
Lawrence Wu, co-founder of Hyperdash, said: "I think the reason it has such a large community is that it tries to fulfill the original vision of cryptocurrency—a meritocratic, permissionless system. It's very idealistic."
Jeff Yan stated that Hyperliquid's ultimate goal is to consolidate all financial resources. Hyperliquid's next step is to venture into prediction markets and options trading. Its first contracts tracking Bitcoin prices, launched in early May, have already generated millions in trading volume.
