Conversation with Hyperdash co-founder: Why is Hyperliquid still severely undervalued?

Source: 《The Rollup》 Compiled by: Felix, PANews

Hyperliquid-based trading data analytics platform Hyperdash co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer Hanson Birringer recently appeared on 《The Rollup》podcast, where he explained in detail how Hyperliquid is building an efficient and decentralized liquidity layer by combining three major trends: perpetual contracts, RWA, and stablecoins. The interview also mentioned related ETF products launched by Grayscale, suggesting that they provide a compliant entry channel for institutional investors into this ecosystem. Birringer also expressed strong optimism about the value-capture mechanism implemented by the protocol through token buybacks.

PANews has compiled highlights from the interview.

Host: How has this month been for you?

Hanson: It’s been a fantastic month. We published a lot of announcements. For example, I officially joined HyperDEX full-time and announced the acquisition of Imperator, so we’re now kicking off the full data and node infrastructure—validator business. I’m really looking forward to the Hyperliquid summit later this week. In short, it’s an exciting time to build in the Hyperliquid ecosystem right now.

Host: I feel that in the past few years, as products have evolved and as tokenization and trading have developed, the investment logic around Hyperliquid has changed a lot. Maybe you can share what your current investment logic for Hyperliquid is. When you raised funds for the Grayscale ETF’s SPV and talked with high-net-worth individuals and institutional allocators, what logic truly resonated with them?

Hanson: This is one of my favorite topics. We can talk about why Hyperliquid is not only important to the crypto capital markets, but also to the broader traditional financial markets that are evolving alongside them. I think, at the end of the day, there are multiple core reasons why investors, researchers, traders, and market participants are so excited about what Hyperliquid is building and want to be part of it.

First, it’s open-source, permissionless, and decentralized. It has the same rules for every participant on the platform. In addition, it not only embodies the spirit of crypto, but also combines it with high-performance financial systems and applications—something that can truly let institutional capital participate in this decentralized world, which we’ve never really seen before. In my decade-long career in crypto, it’s been the only project that genuinely lets these two worlds develop together rather than in parallel.

Host: How do you see Hyperliquid as an expression of the bullish trend for perpetual contracts, tokenization, and stablecoins? How do you view the combination of these three super trends—destined to grow exponentially and span a decade? Is Hyperliquid a good vehicle to express all three?

Hanson: Absolutely—it’s the purest embodiment of these trends.

On perpetual contracts: the answer is obvious. Hypercore is a leading perpetual DEX and is competing with centralized exchanges. In terms of market share by open interest (OI) and trading volume—or from the perspective of liquidity—it’s already among the top and even number one in some trading pairs. When it comes to listing new asset types, it’s also a category leader. We’ve seen the launch of HIP-3 introducing RWA perpetual contracts. So you’re actually combining these bigger trends into a great product.

And in terms of trading commodities and stock perpetual contracts, Hyperliquid is now the de facto category leader among crypto exchanges. What they’ve done is truly open-sourced the builder layer rather than outsourcing it. That’s at the core of the Hyperliquid ethos: bring in other high-quality, capable builders and start adding value to the ecosystem.

As for stablecoins: USDC is now becoming the core quote asset, and I don’t think the market has truly appreciated how significant this move is. Because ever since these stablecoins were created, they’ve never done trading like this. They voluntarily gave up 90% of revenue just to become part of the Hyperliquid narrative. I think it’s very important for people to truly internalize and understand this—not only from the narrative perspective, but also from the revenue perspective.

Given exchange trading volume and what’s happening, Hyperliquid, HyperEVM, and Hypercore combined currently have roughly $10 billion worth of stablecoin supply. Assuming that in the backend these $10 billion can earn a 4% net interest spread, 90% of the earnings would go into the foundation fund, and then be programmed on-chain to buy back Hype tokens. Besides trading fees, this adds purchase pressure amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars for the protocol.

So, to summarize your question: Hype, as a token and as an ecosystem, is really the purest expression of the three biggest crypto super trends—perpetual contracts, RWA, and stablecoins—and over time, they will compound together and generate compounding effects.

Host: Jeff once mentioned that Hyperliquid is like AWS for liquidity—liquidity begets more liquidity. But there’s currently a bottleneck: consumer-grade front ends that are heavily regulated, like Robinhood and Kalshi, find it difficult to directly plug into this system. How do you view this regulatory headwind?

Hanson: It’s a global challenge, but Hyperliquid is actively facing it. The Hyperliquid policy center, together with wallet service provider Phantom, is actively lobbying U.S. regulators such as the CFTC to seek a clear regulatory stance for decentralized trading venues. Once that’s achieved, traditional regulated broker front ends can route orders directly to Hyperliquid’s backend for execution. Moreover, in the past, the industry was disrupted by “zero commission” brokers, and now Hyperliquid provides highly competitive low-cost underlying liquidity—that’s an enormous market.

Host: Recently, the open interest (OI) of HLP 3 (the RWA market) hit an all-time high. Given stablecoin yield and priority fees, how do you expect Hyperliquid’s revenue growth story to play out over the next one or two years?

Hanson: Traditional financial markets are extremely large. The nominal trading volume of certain options and ETFs is measured in the trillions, even tens of trillions. If RWA perpetual contracts can capture even a small share of global trading volume, Hyperliquid’s revenue could grow 100x over the next decade. As trading volume grows, the margin size on the protocol will surge as well, which will further amplify the scale of stablecoin yield and token buybacks.

Host: You’ve formed Hyper Holdings and helped drive the rollout of the Grayscale Hyperliquid ETF. What was the thinking behind that?

Hanson: Hyper Holdings Global is a special purpose vehicle (SPV). We set up the SPV and provided seed funding to Grayscale ETFs in kind. Traditional institutional investors usually don’t have Coinbase accounts and face strict risk-control and compliance frictions. The ETF gives them a one-click way to invest, and our funding support ensures that in the early stage of the product there’s sufficient assets under management (AUM) and liquidity, allowing big capital to enter and exit with confidence. Institutional investors really value Hyperliquid’s clear business model of “cash flow + token buybacks,” which is much easier to evaluate than valuing other chains.

Host: HyperDash is currently handling over $35 billion in trading volume. You recently acquired Imperator, an institutional-grade data company. What value does this bring to the platform?

Hanson: HyperDash is essentially a global brokerage and trading data terminal, offering more advanced tools than official front ends. After acquiring Imperator, we become active validator nodes for Hyperliquid, able to process on-chain data at the fastest speed. This not only improves the trading experience for retail users, but also allows us to provide enterprise-level data packages to traditional asset management firms, helping them with investment underwriting and decision-assessment.

Host: For Hyperliquid, what are your bullish and bearish outlooks? And it’s not necessarily about price—rather, from your perspective, what needs to go right for Hyper Dash, Hyper Holdings, and the entire Hyperliquid ecosystem to achieve the most optimistic outcomes in the next 18 months? Then what would medium-case or bearish scenarios look like, in your view?

Hanson: The bullish logic is very clear. By connecting stablecoin and fiat deposit channels, people around the world who were previously excluded from dollar capital markets can now access global liquidity with just a few taps on a phone—something that has never happened in human history.

As for bearish logic, I really can’t find one. Unless the long-term trend of global internet penetration and financial inclusion reverses, we have plenty of reasons to stay extremely optimistic.

Read also: After Trade.XYZ’s token issuance speculation unsettled the community—how it supports half of Hyperliquid’s “territory”…