Summary
- Arthur Hayes cautioned that Hyperliquid's strategy of using trading fees to buy back tokens could lead to a decline in market share.
- Less than two months after forecasting that HYPE would reach $150, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes sold off all his holdings.
- Despite Hyperliquid boasting $3 billion in open interest for real-world assets, Hayes foresees intense rivalry from Wall Street players.
Hyperliquid has quickly gained traction in the crypto derivatives market since its launch in 2023, but according to BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, this surge may be short-lived.
While the decentralized platform's rising popularity has propelled its native token to new highs, Hayes expressed to Decrypt in an interview that impending competition from Wall Street and established crypto firms could undermine one of the digital asset’s key strengths.
Hyperliquid's model depends on a continuous influx of trading fees to purchase its token from the market and permanently eliminate it, a strategy that Hayes warned makes the protocol vulnerable to any sudden declines in market share.
“At the end of the day, this is a cash story,” he stated. “There will be more competition in real-world asset perps, whether that’s from centralized exchanges like Binance or traditional finance exchanges.”
Arthur Hayes (@CryptoHayes) was initially one of Hyperliquid's strongest supporters as its token reached all-time highs.
On Thursday, he announced he had "dumped" his entire position. He highlighted potential risks that the decentralized platform could encounter: pic.twitter.com/ZS5SYl2CIJ
— Decrypt (@DecryptMedia) June 4, 2026
The day following his interview, Hayes told his followers on X that he had “just dumped” all of his HYPE tokens, as well as another cryptocurrency. He mentioned an anticipated rise in energy prices, a series of IPOs that could drain liquidity, and a reversal by President Trump on AI policies as reasons for his decision.
“Time to take profit,” he remarked, just shy of two months after writing and sharing an article predicting that Hyperliquid’s native token “is going to $150 by August 2026.”
As of Sunday, HYPE was trading around $59, indicating a 14% drop over the previous week, according to CoinGecko. The asset recently achieved a new all-time high above $75. Hayes' abrupt change of heart surprised some observers, but during the interview, he praised Hyperliquid’s growth as a platform for trading otherwise illiquid markets, particularly oil.
“Skeptics of crypto had to recognize that price movements and price discovery for these important variables occur on weekends on crypto trading platforms,” he noted. “I think this is a watershed moment that has awakened people.”
Hyperliquid began offering derivatives for real-world assets, such as gold and silver, following an upgrade in October. On Tuesday, the platform's official X account reported that the total outstanding positions linked to these markets had reached $3 billion.
To date, the platform has repurchased 26.6 million HYPE tokens, permanently removing 579,603 from circulation, according to a Dune dashboard. The total amount represents approximately $1.56 billion worth of Hyperliquid’s token at current market prices.
Hayes pointed out that major U.S. companies are aggressively entering the perpetual futures market. Unlike standard futures, these derivatives—known as perps—do not have expiration dates, allowing traders to speculate indefinitely with periodic payments that keep prices stable.
Under Hayes' leadership, BitMEX launched the first perpetual futures contract in 2016, a concept that was first introduced in the early 1990s by Nobel laureate Robert Shiller. Hayes believes that Wall Street firms will eventually adopt these products to remain competitive.
“All these traditional exchanges will have to introduce competing products,” he asserted. “By next year, we’re likely to see some reasonably liquid products in traditional finance that utilize this perpetual swap structure.”