Hyperliquid opens ‘Pandora’s box’ as oil skyrockets while Bitcoin price flatlines near $68,000

Oil’s breakout has lit up Hyperliquid’s order books as tokenisation takes off.

Traders rushed into tokenised oil perpetuals on the decentralised crypto exchange as crude surged 30% to above $110 a barrel on Sunday amid the escalating conflict in the Middle East. More than $160 million in oil contract volume changed hands on Hyperliquid in the past 24 hours.

“Pandora’s box is open,” Hyunsu Jung, CEO of Hyperliquid treasury firm Hyperion DeFi, told DL News. “The narrative around onchain financial services is changing.”

The rush to trade on Hyperliquid comes as crypto perpetual markets are emerging as a direct venue for macro trades on oil, metals and currencies, amid a constant stream of geopolitical chaos. The attraction is 24/7 trading outside of Wall Street’s standard business hours.

Oil’s weekend surge followed a dramatic escalation in Middle East tensions that rattled energy supply chains and reignited fears over shipping routes through the Strait of Hormuz. The abrupt price shock has triggered the G7 to consider releasing emergency oil reserves, FT reported.

“Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for USA, and World, Safety and Peace. ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!” US President Donald Trump said of the situation on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin barely budged. The world’s largest cryptocurrency is hovering near $67,000, lethargic for the past month and down 50% from its October peak even as major assets like precious metals and energy have skyrocketed.

Hyperliquid momentum

Tokenised traditional assets have accounted for as much as 30% of daily trading activity during peak periods in recent months, Jung said.

He acknowledged that it is impossible to quantify precisely how much traditional finance capital has migrated on-chain because many accounts are pseudonymous. Still, he said traditional financial firms are increasingly choosing Hyperliquid for macro hedging and price discovery.

Jung joins industry leaders such as Kenny Chan, Coinbase’s head of Stablecoin Ecosystem, and Gabe Selby, head of research at CF Benchmarks, who have flagged the surge in tokenised asset trading on Hyperliquid.

Yet the surge in activity hasn’t helped Hyperliquid’s native HYPE token. It’s down nearly 50% from its September peak trading at just over $30.

Competitors exist — Aster and Lighter among them — yet they lack the scale and pace of innovation, Jung argued.

HYPE on Wall Street

Institutional attention toward Hyperliquid is also building with multiple US spot exchange-traded fund filings referencing HYPE, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation database shows.

On Wednesday, Hyperliquid Strategies, a digital asset treasury firm accumulating HYPE tokens, was listed on Nasdaq.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is up 0.9% over the past 24 hours, trading at $68,272.
• Ethereum is up 2.4% past 24 hours at $2,011.

What we’re reading

• Insider Trading Is Going to Get People Killed — The Atlantic
• Trump releases cybercrime strategy to protect crypto in a post-quantum world — DL News
• The Aave DAO Is Collapsing. Is the Token Still a Good Investment? — Unchained
• Bitcoin recovers from $66,000 shock as experts predict volatility — and silver linings — DL News
• This AI agent freed itself and started secretly mining crypto — Axios

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at [email protected].