Hyperliquid "Invades" Wall Street: On-Chain Giant Whale Paradise, Facing Compliance Pressure

Author: Nancy, PANews

The narrative of on-chain finance is rapidly spreading to the global market.

In less than a week, multiple mainstream media outlets have turned their attention to Hyperliquid. Perp DEX, which previously focused on crypto derivatives, is experiencing a breakthrough, with decentralized pricing power becoming a focal point of discussion on Wall Street. However, as on-chain transaction volume continues to expand, the balance between decentralized innovation and regulatory compliance is becoming an unavoidable challenge.

HIP-3 infiltrates mainstream finance; Hyperliquid is a paradise for whales.

As the leader of the Perp DEX, Hyperliquid is continuously widening the gap with its competitors and gradually becoming an emerging infrastructure force in the mainstream financial market.

According to data from DeFiLlama, as of March 16, Hyperliquid's monthly trading volume reached $173.42 billion, far exceeding that of similar platforms.

Real-world asset (RWA) trading has been a significant driver of Hyperliquid's recent growth. Platform data shows that in the past 24 hours alone, its perpetual contract trading volume reached $5.4 billion, with the HIP-3 segment contributing approximately 21.3% ($1.15 billion).

HIP-3 deploys perpetual futures markets for various assets, including commodities and stock indices. Among these traditional assets on HIP-3, WTI crude oil, silver, Brent crude oil, and XYZ100 currently have the most significant demand and activity, with WTI crude oil accounting for more than 35% of the total daily trading volume.

Behind the rapid expansion of trading volume is a large influx of whales into Hyperliquid, whose global user base has exceeded 1.729 million. Further analysis by Hyperliquid Hub, Hyperliquid's ecosystem data analytics service, indicates that Hyperliquid's total trading volume has reached a staggering $4.11 trillion. The top 100 addresses alone contributed over $3.34 trillion, accounting for 81.3% of the total trading volume, while the top 200 addresses accounted for almost 98.81%, leaving the remaining addresses with only about 1.19% of the trading volume.

It is clear that Hyperliquid is not a playground for retail investors, but rather dominated by a small number of well-funded and extremely active traders, such as institutions, whales, high-frequency traders, and professional market makers.

Looking further, the number of independent traders on HIP-3 has exceeded 1.85 million (note: if the same wallet is connected on different dates, it will be counted as two wallets respectively), with more than 810,000 new traders in the past month alone, further confirming the demand for tokenized assets.

The recent surge in HIP-3 business is directly linked to the US-Iran conflict, making Hyperliquid a new hub for global macro trading. Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, and Fortune, among other mainstream media outlets, have recently used Hyperliquid crude oil contracts as a direct price reference, noting that Hyperliquid had already completed price discovery over the weekend before the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) opened on Monday, becoming a real-time window for global macro assets.

It was by seizing the pricing power of TradeFi, the liquidity vacuum, and the demand for macro hedging that Hyperliquid was able to begin its true "invasion" of the mainstream financial market.

Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan also stated that the US-Iran conflict has brought the ever-open crypto market into the spotlight. Previously, if a major geopolitical shock occurred on a Sunday morning, investors would typically wait until the US futures market opened at 6 PM (Eastern Time) to understand its impact. Now, they can directly switch to 24/7 on-chain trading platforms to complete trades in real time. The shift of the financial industry to on-chain is an irreversible trend, like a ball rolling down a hill—unstoppable and far faster than imagined. However, participating in the on-chain market still has barriers to entry, including familiarity with wallets, stablecoins, and platforms like Hyperliquid and Uniswap. (Related reading: Beyond Wall Street Hours, Traditional Asset Pricing Power Shifts to On-Chain )

Faced with this rapidly developing trend of on-chain finance, traditional financial players such as Nasdaq and CME have also begun to develop tokenized trading businesses in order to gain a competitive edge in the future market.

Crypto perpetual futures may launch in the US next month; Hyperliquid faces compliance challenges.

Since last year, the Perp DEX market has seen a significant surge in liquidity.

A recent CoinGecko report indicates that DEX perpetual contracts surged to $6.7 trillion in 2025, a 346% increase from the previous year, while CEX open interest declined by 20.8% during the same period. This trend is driven by the rise of perpetual DEXs such as Hyperliquid and Lighter, reflecting a large-scale migration of funds from CEXs to DEXs.

The increasingly clear regulatory environment is further expanding the development space of the perpetual contract market, attracting more mainstream funds to enter this field. Recently, Mike Selig, Chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), discussed the regulatory progress of crypto perpetual futures and prediction markets in a public speech. He stated that the CFTC is working to launch true perpetual futures in the United States and expects to announce relevant policies in the next month or so to attract liquidity back to the U.S. while providing investors with better protection. Selig also pointed out that in the past, due to regulatory uncertainty, a large amount of liquidity flowed overseas, and the CFTC is working with Paul Atkins, Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), to advance Project Crypto and coordinate the reform of digital asset regulation.

However, regulatory clarity could also lead to another outcome. If compliance requirements disrupt the permissionless, intermediary-free on-chain transaction path, Perp DEX's core appeal could be significantly diminished, and it would face direct competition from compliant crypto platforms and traditional financial institutions.

In fact, for many users, in addition to factors such as incentive mechanisms, self-custody requirements, capital efficiency, and hedging needs, the fact that no KYC is required is also an important reason for attracting funds to on-chain transactions.

For example, on-chain analyst Eye previously wrote that some institutional traders active on Hyperliquid showed obvious discomfort after their on-chain trading wallets were identified, and even took the initiative to contact the analyst to pressure him to stop disclosing information. The reason was mostly related to the possibility that their losing trades might be known to the outside world.

If Hyperliquid hopes to be considered a legitimate participant in the new financial system, it may have to accept and comply with relevant regulatory rules. This is especially true given the platform's past controversies surrounding token manipulation and insider trading, which could further increase its compliance pressures.

To address regulatory challenges, Hyperliquid officially established the Hyperliquid Policy Center in Washington, D.C., in February of this year, with veteran crypto lawyer Jake Chervinsky serving as its first CEO. The center aims to create a legal path for the widespread adoption of DeFi in the United States, help Congress and federal agencies understand the underlying technologies of DeFi, and provide professional support for regulatory rule-making.

Chervinsky stated that the current regulatory framework, developed in the "analog era," is ill-suited to cover new transaction formats such as decentralized protocols. One of the policy center's primary tasks is to establish a legal framework for perpetual contracts. To support its operations, the Hyperliquid-affiliated foundation has donated 1 million HYPE tokens (currently worth approximately $28 million) to the center.

In a recent interview, Hyperliquid co-founder Jeff Yan emphasized his desire for the platform to be "used forever," rather than quickly fading away as market trends change. He also stressed the importance of differentiating Hyperliquid Labs from the Hyperliquid platform and ecosystem, and committing to building Hyperliquid into a financially neutral platform that provides sustainable infrastructure for the development of on-chain perpetual contracts and decentralized finance.

As DeFi attempts to challenge traditional finance, compliance has become a prerequisite for opening up a larger market. This is not only a test for Hyperliquid, but also a reality that other DEXs and even the entire DeFi sector must face.