HYPE at $40? The Numbers Say It's Basically Free, and Wall Street's Closed Again

Hyperliquid just survived one of those weeks that makes you wonder if someone slipped something psychedelic into the communal punch bowl at Binance headquarters. While the old guard was presumably distracted arguing about whose turn it is to update the ticker, Hyperliquid was out here collecting trading volume like it was going out of style—which, given crypto's relationship with trends, it very well might be next week.

The platform hit a record $5.4 billion in single-day trading volume on March 23—silver at $1.3B, WTI crude at $1.2B, Brent crude at $940M, gold at $558M. Then on March 26, Hyperliquid captured $1.7 billion in oil volume while traditional commodity markets sat closed for the weekend. When geopolitical tensions spiked and traders needed somewhere to move crude, they moved it here. Apparently, even oil traders have discovered that sleeping until noon on Saturdays doesn't have to be incompatible with active portfolio management.

So where does that leave $HYPE? Trading at $39.29, ranked #10 globally with a $10.06 billion market cap, up nearly 35% over the past month. To most observers, that looks expensive. David Schamis, CEO of Hyperliquid Strategies, thinks those observers need to recalibrate—or possibly visit an optometrist.

"If you valued this the way people value Ethereum or the way people value Solana, the number is—we're nowhere near the number that it should be at, whatever it is, $40 a token right now," he told The Rollup. The "whatever it is" part is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, but the underlying thesis remains intact.

The Numbers Don't Lie

Hyperliquid produced $14 million in protocol fees last week alone, a 56% week-over-week jump, with March tracking toward $53 million