Hyperliquid Token Surges 20% Following Trump's Regulatory Remarks

Hyperliquid’s native token surged more than 20% over 24 hours after United States President Donald Trump said regulators were working on a compliant pathway to make the decentralized trading platform available to American users.

HYPE traded around $62 immediately before Trump’s remarks and subsequently jumped as much as 16% to a 24-hour high of $72.28, according to CoinGecko. It later settled to about $70, up approximately 20% in the last day, with 24-hour trading volume reaching $1.4 billion.

“I understand that Mike is also working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States in a fully compliant and legal fashion,” Trump said during a Wednesday White House event, referring to Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chair Michael Selig. “Working very hard on that.”

Hyperliquid is a decentralized trading platform and layer-1 blockchain best known for its onchain perpetual futures exchange. It is the largest decentralized perpetuals venue, accounting for about 40% of the sector’s trading volume over the past 30 days, with roughly $201 billion in volume, according to DefiLlama.

Neither the CFTC nor Hyperliquid has released a formal proposal explaining how US access would work, whether an application has been submitted or when a compliant service could launch.

Options bet on HYPE treasury firm raises eyebrows

Meanwhile, shares of Hyperliquid Strategies, a Nasdaq-listed HYPE treasury company trading under the ticker PURR, closed Wednesday at $9.39, up 30.4%, according to Yahoo Finance. Despite sharing the protocol’s name, the company said it is independent and not affiliated with Hyperliquid.

Roughly four hours before Trump spoke, someone reportedly paid about $65,000 for 719 PURR call options with an $8 strike price expiring in mid-October. According to CNBC, the contracts were purchased for approximately $0.90 each and were quoted at $2.45 by the close, valuing the position at roughly $176,000 and producing an unrealized gain of about $111,000.

Delayed market data derived from the Options Price Reporting Authority corroborates the unusually heavy activity in the contract. OptiView data showed 2,575 of the October $8 calls traded during the session, compared with just 67 contracts in open interest beforehand. Volume was more than 140 times the contract’s 30-day average.

The publicly available data does not identify the buyer or establish that the trade was based on material nonpublic information.