MW The year's hottest crypto play is helping investors bet on the future of trading
By Christine Idzelis
'People are betting that Hyperliquid is going to win the race to Wall Street,' says one analyst
Hyperliquid tokens have seen a big rally in 2026, as the similarly named trading platform sees a surge in popularity and activity.
Shares of digital-asset treasury company Hyperliquid Strategies have surged this year, driven by investors betting that the decentralized cryptocurrency exchange with a similar name is setting a new template for the future of trading.
The hype, so to speak, is rooted in the booming popularity of Hyperliquid, a decentralized crypto exchange where investors can use Hyperliquid tokens, a kind of cryptocurrency like bitcoin or Ethereum's ether, to trade synthetic perpetual futures tied not just to cryptocurrencies, but also to real-world assets like gold and oil.
Due to regulatory issues, U.S. investors are prohibited from trading on Hyperliquid. That being said, there are workarounds - more on that later.
Hyperliquid Strategies serves as a digital-asset treasury company, or DAT. Essentially, DATs are corporate entities dedicated to stockpiling cryptocurrencies. Strategy, formerly known as Microstrategy, helped popularize the concept when it started buying large amounts of bitcoin in 2020.
Hyperliquid Strategies shares have outperformed most other DATs this year and were trading at $5.45 on Friday afternoon. Shares of Strategy (MSTR) and Bitmine Immersion Technologies $(BMNR)$ - two popular DATs focused on bitcoin and ethereum, respectively - have fallen 10.2% and 24%, respectively.
Hyperliquid Strategies has an edge over its DAT rivals: Earlier this week, S&P Global announced a licensing deal that will allow perpetual futures tied to the S&P 500 index SPX to trade on Hyperliquid, according to a press release.
That comes on the heels of a surge of activity on the platform since the start of the conflict in Iran, as investors around the world have increasingly turned to Hyperliquid to speculate on oil prices over the weekend, when traditional financial markets are closed, according to Danny Nelson, research analyst at Bitwise.
"People are betting that Hyperliquid is going to win the race to Wall Street," he said. "You're seeing billions of dollars move across Hyperliquid every single day."
The Iran conflict sparked a significant jump in investor interest in March in speculating on oil prices on Hyperliquid's platform.
How does it work?
The Hyperliquid exchange is powered by Hyperliquid tokens, or Hype tokens, as they're often called. Investors can place trades on the Hyperliquid decentralized exchange, using cryptocurrency as collateral.
While the broader crypto space has been mired in a painful bear market in 2026, the price of Hype tokens has risen by about 60%, according to MarketWatch calculations using data from CoinMarketCap.
By comparison, bitcoin is down 20% since the start of the year, and ether - the second-largest crypto by market value, after bitcoin - is down 28%, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Crypto prices have been climbing in March, however, with bitcoin up roughly 8% since the start of the month.
See: Here's how the Iran conflict may have helped crypto prices recover, even as stocks struggle
Hyperliquid Strategies is not behind the development of the Hyperliquid blockchain technology or the trade platform built on it. Rather, Hyperliquid Strategies purchases Hyperliquid tokens, Nelson said. Investors can gain exposure to the cryptocurrency simply by buying shares of the company. The token and stock tend to move in the same direction, Nelson said.
Nelson said the Hyperliquid exchange is much faster and cheaper to use than the Ethereum blockchain, creating interest among financial institutions, particularly high-frequency traders.
That said, major obstacles to more widespread adoption remain in place. Although Hyperliquid is becoming more popular internationally, U.S. investors are not permitted to trade on the decentralized derivative exchange for regulatory reasons, according to Nelson. U.S. investors can sometimes access the exchange, and trade on it, using a virtual private network, or VPN.
People who trade on Hyperliquid don't own the underlying assets. Rather, they are making speculative bets with perpetual futures contracts. For example, that means they don't own the U.S. stocks in the S&P 500 or collect dividends on them.
Instead, they can make, or lose, money based on how the index trades on Hyperliquid. The perpetual futures contracts on Hyperliquid often involve substantial amounts of leverage, meaning a small move in the underlying asset can potentially wipe out a trader's whole account.
Buyers of Hype are generally excited about the platform's potential, Nelson said. The excitement around Hyperliquid reflects "not just how people are using it today," he said, but "how people are using it tomorrow."
Joseph Adinolfi contributed.
-Christine Idzelis
This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 20, 2026 15:30 ET (19:30 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
