Summary
- For the first time, real-world assets (RWAs)—which are tokenized forms of traditional financial instruments such as stocks, crude oil, and market indices—accounted for 54% of Hyperliquid's trading volume from July 13 to 19.
- Lorenzo Valente, ARK Invest's director of digital assets research, stated that the $26 billion in RWA trading last week exceeded the total crypto perpetual volume of all decentralized exchanges worldwide.
- Most of the activity on Hyperliquid's marketplace was driven by interest in South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix, which competes with Samsung in AI memory production.
In a notable shift, Hyperliquid traders exchanged more funds in stocks and commodities than in cryptocurrencies for the first time. Lorenzo Valente, the director of digital assets research at ARK Invest, shared this significant milestone on X, indicating that "we are entering a new era for DeFi." He pointed out that RWAs generated more trading volume than crypto in a single week for the first time ever.
During the period of July 13 to 19, RWAs, which encompass tokenized versions of assets like company stocks and crude oil, generated $25.1 billion, or 52% of Hyperliquid's total weekly volume of $48.2 billion according to Blockworks data. Valente later updated the figure to $26 billion and 54%.
This context highlights the significance of these numbers. The overall perpetual DEX trading volume across the industry reached $79 billion last week, with Hyperliquid accounting for $50 billion of that. The $26 billion in RWA trading surpassed the total crypto perpetual volume across all other decentralized exchanges combined.
How Stocks Made Their Way onto a Crypto Platform
This development is attributed to HIP-3, a framework introduced by Hyperliquid in October 2025 that allows external teams to create their own perpetual markets—contracts that follow an asset's price indefinitely, enabling traders to speculate on price movements using leverage—while utilizing Hyperliquid's existing infrastructure. Developers must stake 500,000 HYPE tokens, valued at approximately $30 million, to gain access to the system.
We are entering a new era for DeFi.
For the first time ever, @HyperliquidX generated more volume from RWAs than crypto in a single week. RWAs accounted for 54% of total trading volume.
Interestingly, since June, individual stocks have surpassed indices and… pic.twitter.com/INbfCwc5pJ
— Lorenzo Valente (@LorenzoARK) July 23, 2026
Since June, single stock trading has eclipsed both indices and commodities on HIP-3, with single-stock perpetuals now constituting 61% of total RWA trading. The HIP-3 platform has already facilitated pre-IPO markets for companies like SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI. Valente highlighted that "RWAs accounted for 54% of total trading volume."
The stock with the highest trading volume is SK Hynix, the South Korean memory chip manufacturer that competes with Samsung in providing DRAM and high-bandwidth memory solutions for AI applications.
ARK's interest in Hyperliquid stretches back further; in September 2025, CEO Cathie Wood mentioned on the Master Investor podcast that the platform reminded her of Solana during its early days, suggesting that Solana had established itself among the top names in crypto. She referred to Hyperliquid as "the new kid on the block," and ARK has not disclosed any positions since then.
Now, one of ARK's analysts is posing a challenging question for the industry. Valente expressed skepticism that RWA trading will naturally coalesce on the same platforms as crypto, suggesting that specialized leaders may emerge within the RWA sector—and that a platform's dominance in Bitcoin and Ethereum transactions may be "far less important than many people assume." He cautioned that traders focused solely on crypto tokens are "focusing on the wrong market."