HYPE Skyrockets to New All-Time High

Hyperliquid’s HYPE token is one of the top performers this week, driven by BTC’s new all-time high breakout and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) commissioner’s favorable language toward perpetual futures trading in the United States.

Hyperliquid is a perpetual swaps-focused decentralized exchange (DEX) that runs on its own Layer 1 (L1) blockchain.

HYPE rallied nearly 60% over the last three days, reaching as high as $37 before retracing to $34, thrusting the token into the top 15 tokens by market capitalization.

HYPE is now valued at a $11.5 billion market capitalization, and a $34.2 billion fully diluted valuation.

the-defiant — HYPE 7-day price chart. Source: CoinGecko

HYPE was already one of the strongest altcoins as BTC began marching toward all-time highs, but received an unexpected boost from CFTC commissioner Summer Mersinger yesterday.

Mersinger, who will step down from the CFTC at the end of this month to become CEO of the Blockchain Association, spoke positively about crypto perpetual futures on Bloomberg TV on May 22, stating:

“I think those [crypto perpetual futures] can come to market now. We’re seeing some applications and I believe we’ll have some of those products trading live very soon. It would be great to get that trading back onshore in the United States."

The token surge also pushed the total-value locked (TVL) on Hyperliquid L1 to a new all-time high of $1.33 billion, pushing it into the top 10 chains by DeFi TVL, per DeFiLama. Hyperliquid L1’s EVM ecosystem is led by lending protocol Hyperlend, and collateralized debt position (CDP) and lending protocol, Felix, which collectively account for 36% of the ecosystem’s TVL.