Key Takeaways
Arthur Hayes’ 126x HYPE call fueled strong activity and whale volatility. Rising DEX volume lifted optimism, but sustained trading will decide if momentum holds.
BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes laid out a bold prediction for the future of decentralized finance at the WebX 2025 conference in Tokyo.
During the conference on the 25th of August, he projected that stablecoin expansion could drive annualized fees on decentralized exchanges (DEXs) to $258 billion, a dramatic jump from today’s $1.2 billion.
Source: Alex Svanevik/X
Arthur Hayes’ HYPE prediction
Highlighting the potential for market growth, Hayes pointed to Hyperliquid [HYPE], the native token of a leading decentralized derivatives exchange, which was among the few tokens to post gains over the past 24 hours.
According to Hayes, Hyperliquid could surge as much as 126 times over the next three years, reflecting his confidence in the broader DeFi ecosystem’s explosive potential.
Following his comment, HYPE showed notable activity in its recent trading sessions, gaining nearly 4% over the past 24 hours and reaching $45.64, briefly touching above $47 earlier in the day.
At press time, it was trading at $45.14, marking a modest 0.34% increase in the last 24 hours and a 5.65% gain over the past week, according to CoinMarketCap.
Indicators send mixed signals
While the Relative Strength Index (RSI) sat at 53, supporting a bullish sentiment, the MACD line remained close to the signal line, showing no decisive trend between buyers and sellers.
Source: TradingView
Whales also flood in
This coincided with the market also witnessing large whale activity.
Over the past 12 hours, whale address 0xa523 sold 886,287 HYPE (worth $39.66 million) and 1.63 million Fartcoin [FARTCOIN] ($1.27 million), incurring a loss of $1.14 million, to fund a 15x long position in 51,691 Ethereum [ETH] ($226.7 million).
At press time, that position was down over $13 million, with liquidation set at $4,075.7, as reported by Lookonchain.
Yet, despite these shifts, Hyperliquid’s DEX performance remains robust.
Weekend trading volume hit an all-time high of $1.56 billion, while transaction fees have already surpassed July’s record, totaling $93 million so far this month, according to DefiLlama.
Additionally, the platform’s total value locked (TVL) also stood at $685 million, just shy of its February peak, highlighting strong but slightly tempered institutional interest.
On top of that, AMBCrypto’s recent reporting notes that while Hyperliquid DEX’s fundamentals are solid, market sentiment has caused trading volume to stagnate over the past two months.
Community reaction adds to the optimism
Jon Charbonneau, Co-Founder of dba crypto, noted,
“HYPE flipping all the other L1s (ex-BTC) isn’t as crazy when you realize its already out-earning all of them.”
“A lot of people have correctly identified the $HYPE trade as a generational event in crypto, but very few have sized it properly enough to reflect this.”
But in conclusion, the CEO of Galaxy Digital, Mike Novogratz, put it best when he said,
“Proud of my friends at Unit and Hype! Impressive work. Full disclosure we are long $HYPE tokens.”
Next: Why WFE called tokenized stocks ‘mimics’ that risk market integrity
