Bitwise CIO: Value Hyperliquid Against $600T Market

Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan argued Hyperliquid’s HYPE token should be valued against a $600 trillion global asset market rather than the roughly $3 trillion crypto market. He noted Bitwise’s spot Hyperliquid ETF, BHYP, has pulled in close to $60 million since its mid‑May listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

Hougan made the remarks during a Friday interview, describing Hyperliquid as a financial application that uses blockchain technology on the back end to provide trading across a wide range of assets. He framed the platform as a fintech product rather than a pure crypto project.

Hougan explained the platform routes almost all trading fees into token buybacks and characterized HYPE as a next‑generation exchange token. “I think it’s going to take investors a while to realize that this is a Gen 2 token. Like it’s a new version. It’s not like the past,” he said. The token traded near $68 on Saturday and was ranked 11th by market capitalization.

Bitwise’s BHYP ETF uses the firm’s infrastructure to stake roughly 70% of the fund’s holdings and directs about 10% of management fees into HYPE retained on Bitwise’s balance sheet. U.S. retail investors cannot trade directly on Hyperliquid’s offshore exchange, so BHYP provides a regulated way to gain exposure to the token and the platform’s perpetuals market.

Hougan reported that roughly half of Hyperliquid’s perpetual futures volume already comes from non‑crypto products, citing S&P 500 perpetuals and oil contracts as examples, and he predicted non‑crypto volume could eventually exceed 90% of total trading.

He flagged execution risk and rising competition as challenges. Hougan named the New York Stock Exchange, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and rival decentralized finance protocols as potential competitors and warned there is no guarantee Hyperliquid will prevail.

Perpetual futures are contracts that allow traders to gain exposure to an asset’s price without a fixed expiry. Hyperliquid’s fee‑to‑buyback mechanism is designed to reduce circulating supply and support token value while enabling trading in both crypto and tokenized non‑crypto assets.

Bitwise positioned BHYP as a regulated on‑ramp for U.S. investors seeking spot exposure to an exchange token and to the perpetuals market. Hougan linked the ETF’s early inflows to investor interest in tokenized trading platforms if on‑chain execution and custody scale.