The Hyperliquid token ($HYPE ) of the same-name trading platform is among the leaders in dynamics in 2025. As of December 15, its capitalization amounted to $9.9 billion with an HYPE price of about $29.5. The peak price of the asset was reached in mid-September and was around $60, a decline of more than 50% from the record high to date.
The platform combined high performance characteristic of centralized exchanges, a transparent economic model, and logical tokenomics. The Hyperliquid project became one of the most discussed in the crypto market and the largest by trading volumes in the decentralized derivatives sector.
Hyperliquid is a decentralized exchange for perpetual futures contracts, operating on a separate blockchain of the same name. The platform is primarily aimed at active traders and professional market participants. The interface and operational logic are closer to centralized exchanges, while all calculations and operations occur on the blockchain, meaning they are open for viewing and analysis by any market participant.
To start trading on the platform, an account in the usual sense is not needed, nor is there a need to go through the identity verification procedure; it is enough to connect a crypto wallet. This openness allows analytical services and market participants to quickly notice abnormally large trades. As a result, large traders such as James Wynn on Hyperliquid gained immense popularity in the crypto community — for instance, Wynn's account on X has over 480,000 followers.
Market leader
Since the beginning of January 2025, total trading volumes on Hyperliquid exceeded $2.9 trillion, which is comparable to the cumulative figure of the other top-5 Perp DEX (Lighter, Aster, edgeX, ApeX), according to Defillama data as of December 15. The HYPE token ranked 10th in the price growth rating since the beginning of January, adding about 25%.
The crypto asset also rose to 12th place in the ranking of the largest by market capitalization on Coinmarketcap, reaching $9.9 billion. At the beginning of January, HYPE ranked 24th.
The revenues of the Hyperliquid project as a blockchain and exchange as a whole grew several times: from $10 million in December last year to $96 million in November 2025. Cumulative revenues since January exceeded $610 million, placing the project in the top 4 by revenues since the beginning of the year among crypto projects. According to Tokenterminal, Hyperliquid was surpassed only by the issuer of the USDC stablecoin Circle, the Tron (TRX) blockchain, and the issuer of the USDT stable token Tether.
Economics
The project initially rejected the classic venture model with large private rounds, which reduced pressure from early investors and created a more even distribution of tokens.
Moreover, it has never attracted market makers or external funding to maintain liquidity on the exchange. The founder of the project, Jeff Yan, said: "We had neither investors nor similar agreements. We always believed that, although it might complicate the situation in the short term, it is the right approach in the long term."
In addition to sustainable growth in key metrics, Hyperliquid became one of the largest projects by token buyback volume in the cryptocurrency market in 2025. According to Asxn as of December 15, the total number of tokens repurchased under the project's buyback program reached 37 million HYPE, or nearly $1.1 billion at current rates. This placed HYPE among the leaders in this metric among crypto projects. Furthermore, the buyback mechanism of HYPE is regular and automated, which distinguishes Hyperliquid from projects where buybacks are used episodically or for marketing purposes.
The project directs more than 90% of its revenues to this strategy, directly linking the growth of trading volumes and user activity with the reduction of the circulating supply of the token.
Competition
In 2025, Hyperliquid formed an active user community around it. This partly happened due to the project's lack of venture funding, and thus no external pressure on the crypto project. The developers placed significant emphasis on user experience and additionally conducted airdrops of the HYPE token, which was radically different from most similar projects in previous years and became the largest in the history of the crypto market.
Despite the rise of the HYPE token to leading positions, trillion-dollar volumes of total trading, and the popularity of the exchange, competitors Binance, OKX, Bybit, Coinbase, and others did not add the HYPE token to their spot trading lists until almost the middle of the year.
Despite the disregard for the project by major centralized competing exchanges, the project became a kind of template for launching similar solutions and also led to the growth of the entire Perp DEX sector as a whole. Trading volumes on such exchanges from July to December 15, 2025, amounted to about $5 trillion, while in the first half of 2025 it was slightly over $2 trillion, and in the second half of 2024, the figure was recorded at $1.3 trillion.
Against the backdrop of growing interest in Perp DEX, the share of trading on such platforms relative to classic crypto exchanges in the perpetual futures sector rose to a historic high of over 19.2%, according to TheBlock as of December 15.
At the same time, the figure at the end of December 2024 was only 4.9%. And from May 2025, when the share was around 7.5%, growth occurred every month without exception.
In this context, Perp DEX options also emerged from centralized crypto exchanges. For instance, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao began promoting a competitor to Hyperliquid — Aster DEX — in the middle of the year. Trading volume figures on existing exchanges before the launch of Aster, such as Lighter, edgeX, and ApeX, soared by multiples.
However, despite the successes, Hyperliquid remains a niche product aimed at active traders. Like any derivatives, the platform is sensitive to market volatility and regulatory risks. Some experts claim that serious deficiencies have been identified in the platform's design, exposing users to systemic risk. Some believe that due to its size, potential problems at Hyperliquid during market stress could lead to a "collapse in the crypto market."
