Dialogue with Eyenovia Executives: How to Open a New Narrative for Crypto US Stocks with HYPE?
Written by: BUBBLE, Rhythm
On June 17, digital ophthalmic technology company Eyenovia (stock code: EYEN) announced that it had signed a securities purchase agreement to conduct a PIPE "public equity private placement" of $50 million to institutional accredited investors, which will be used to establish its first cryptocurrency reserve program, targeting the Hyperliquid native token HYPE. The $50 million investment amount far exceeds the company's market value of $20 million. Since the announcement, EYEN has seen a continuous rise in the US stock market, and as of yesterday's close, EYEN's market value has quadrupled since the announcement, soaring to $80 million.
To promote this strategic transformation, the company simultaneously appointed Hyunsu Jung as the new Chief Investment Officer (CIO) and board member, and on July 3, the company name will officially change to Hyperion DeFi, with the stock code updated to HYPD.
What exactly is Eyenovia, the first US-listed company to use the HYPE token for a "micro-strategy" plan? Who is its driving force, Hyunsu Jung? With more and more companies utilizing crypto tokens for "rebirth," will HYPE be a better choice?
In response to these questions, BlockBeats interviewed MAX, a core member of the Hyperliquid community, and the newly appointed Chief Investment Officer of Eyenovia, Hyunsu Jung.
From a Near-Delisting Ophthalmic Company to the Company Holding the Most HYPE
The Hyperliquid mainnet has recently performed strongly, with the total value locked (TVL) soaring into the top ten of public chain projects, and the market value of the native token HYPE jumping to 11th place in the cryptocurrency rankings. User participation is steadily increasing, with daily transaction fees on the platform stabilizing between $2 million and $3 million, and annual revenue approaching $1 billion. In stark contrast, Eyenovia, which had no connection to blockchain before its transformation, was in a deteriorating situation. The company went public on NASDAQ in February 2018 at a price of $800 per share, but the stock price subsequently fell, and by April 2025, it had dropped below $1, facing a delisting crisis.
Eyenovia originally focused on micro-dose ophthalmic devices, with its flagship product Optejet targeting post-operative ophthalmology and pediatric myopia. However, in recent years, Eyenovia's revenue has been dismal, with total revenue for 2024 only $56,000 and a net loss of $50 million, putting it at risk of delisting. Faced with bleak prospects for its traditional business, the company chose to fully bet on crypto assets, intending to find a "new lifeline" through the high-growth ecosystem of Hyperliquid.
According to the official announcement on June 17, Eyenovia will issue 15.4 million convertible preferred shares and 30.8 million common stock warrants, with an exercise price of $3.25. If all warrants are exercised, the company could raise up to $150 million. On June 23, Eyenovia announced the purchase of 1,040,584.5 HYPE tokens at an average price of about $34 per token, which are currently held in custody at Anchorage.
In this dire situation, Eyenovia turned its attention to the rapidly growing on-chain exchange Hyperliquid, viewing the HYPE reserve as a last "lifeline." This move has indeed instilled strong confidence in the market; after the news broke, Eyenovia's stock price surged 134% in a single day, instantly reversing its ongoing decline. Through this "lifeline" of crypto assets, a struggling small ophthalmic company has found hope for rebirth.
In addition to the initial $50 million allocation, Eyenovia has also designed warrants to secure more funding, and Hyunsu told BlockBeats, "Eyenovia plans to become the publicly listed company with the largest HYPE holdings globally."
A New Executive from the Crypto Space, Backed by a Veteran DeFi Operator
Before announcing its entry into the crypto space, Eyenovia had no prior connection to the blockchain industry. Therefore, when the company offered 500,000 shares of common stock as an incentive to appoint Hyunsu Jung as Chief Investment Officer, it caused quite a stir in the industry. Through our conversation, we learned that Hyunsu Jung began his career at EY-Parthenon as a consultant, participating in significant corporate mergers and acquisitions, such as the breakup of United Technologies. However, in 2021, faced with the bureaucratic and slow work atmosphere of traditional institutions, Hyunsu felt disillusioned and frustrated with his career development, and decisively chose to switch to the emerging crypto industry in search of breakthroughs. According to him, this choice stemmed from dissatisfaction with the stagnation of traditional enterprises and a belief in the future potential of blockchain.
Hyunsu's first stop in the blockchain job market was DARMA Capital, a digital asset investment advisory firm co-founded by ConsenSys co-founder Andrew Keys in 2018. During his time at DARMA, he led the development of a Filecoin asset utilization product aimed at lowering the financial barriers for distributed storage providers to acquire FIL tokens. This derivative product (FAUS) received approval from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and was the first to offer FIL lending scenarios, gradually expanding to over 50 data center operating teams globally, with total deployed assets exceeding $300 million. Hyunsu pointed out, "If on-chain assets have real utility, the income opportunities they generate will far exceed what traditional finance can offer."
Hyunsu's connection to the Hyperliquid project was not sudden; it was thanks to his friendship with core community member Max. The two met during their study abroad years, and as Max recalled on X, "It has been nearly ten years since Hyunsu and I were broke exchange students in Edinburgh; it has also been five years since we became roommates in San Juan and ventured into the cryptocurrency world together." Hyunsu told BlockBeats that Max introduced him to the community during the public testnet phase of Hyperliquid in 2023, and Hyunsu has been deeply involved in Hyperliquid ever since.
What Else Does Eyenovia Plan to Do Besides Staking HYPE?
Shortly after Eyenovia announced its purchase of HYPE, Canadian listed company Tony G Co-Investment attempted a similar operation. On June 12, the company bought 10,000 HYPE tokens, and within an hour, the stock price surged over 800%, creating an astonishing effect of increasing market value by $57 million with just a $430,000 investment.
According to official disclosures, Eyenovia plans to use the vast majority of the funds raised to purchase over one million HYPE tokens. In the Hyperliquid HIP-3 protocol mechanism, deploying a token market requires staking at least one million HYPE tokens, and node owners can receive a share of the transaction fees from that market. Eyenovia's purchase just meets this requirement, significantly enhancing the compound possibilities of "holding tokens + nodes + earnings." The operation of incorporating crypto assets into the balance sheet of a publicly listed company is not uncommon today, and Eyenovia is undoubtedly one of the latest and most aggressive practitioners.
This transaction is seen by the community as the beginning of the Hyperliquid version of the "MicroStrategy model." Community member Telaga even proposed a long-term concept of operating a strategy with HYPE, envisioning a closed-loop asset management system centered around HYPE, covering CDT bond tokens, NFT options, LP market making, liquidity vaults, perpetual contracts, and DeFi modules, to achieve structural exposure allocation and compound growth of on-chain funds.
Specifically, the vault will be funded by external users, primarily deposited in the form of USD stablecoins. After the funds are deposited, users will receive two types of on-chain certificates: one is convertible bond tokens (CDT), representing principal rights; the other is option-type NFTs (Options NFT), symbolizing future income options or repurchase rights. This design allows user assets to have liquidity while binding long-term value growth expectations through contract structures.
Hyunsu told BlockBeats that the company plans not only to incorporate HYPE into its balance sheet but also to establish a long-term compounding model through staking, on-chain yield protocols, referral commissions, and node operations.
On June 25, Eyenovia began to fulfill its commitment to on-chain participation by announcing a partnership with Hyperliquid's native staking protocol Kinetiq to launch a joint validator node Kinetiq x Hyperion. This node uses Eyenovia's recently purchased one million HYPE tokens to provide validation services for the Hyperliquid network, enhancing network security and allowing the company to directly participate in on-chain revenue generation. According to reports, this node is supported by institutional-grade node service provider Pier Two, earning native yields through staking HYPE.
At the same time, Hyunsu provided BlockBeats with two potential cases that Eyenovia might implement in the future:
Signing bilateral agreements with trading institutions to stake HYPE and bind wallets to the institution's main wallet. The trading party can enjoy fee discounts without bearing HYPE exposure or self-hedging.
The Hyperliquid interface can transfer fee discounts to new users through referral codes. If a certain interface lacks top-tier fee levels, it can improve its competitiveness through a "staking lease agreement."
Hyunsu told BlockBeats that although Eyenovia currently does not plan to build or operate any on-chain products, it intends to become an active investor and responsible participant in the Hyperliquid ecosystem. Depending on internal approval, the company will participate in DeFi applications on HyperEVM, focusing on LST liquidity and lending market supply.
Why HYPE?
In the US stock market, "buying tokens" is becoming a new means for some companies to tell their valuation stories. From the pioneer MicroStrategy to later entrants like SharpLink and GameStop, many companies have attempted to achieve stock price surges and market value management by purchasing mainstream crypto assets (such as BTC and ETH).
Among them, MicroStrategy has boldly bet on Bitcoin since 2020, with its stock price soaring from initially just over $10 to $370 in 2025, and its market value surpassing $100 billion, making it a textbook case of "coin-stock integration." A relatively unknown small gambling company, SharpLink Gaming (SBET), announced in May 2025 that it had raised $425 million in a private placement to purchase 163,000 Ethereum (ETH), resulting in a 500% stock price surge on the same day. Against this backdrop, Eyenovia's choice of the emerging HYPE over traditional BTC and ETH naturally raises curiosity: why HYPE?
Hyunsu told BlockBeats, "HYPE has a unique deflationary attribute among currently mainstream crypto assets. The lack of structural net selling pressure makes it more suitable as collateral, providing a more solid foundation for DeFi. Additionally, the scarcity of HYPE in the spot market gives us an advantage." The Hyperliquid blockchain has a built-in mechanism for trading fee buybacks and burns, where the accumulated fees on the network are automatically used to repurchase and "recycle" circulating HYPE.
As of June 2025, over 25 million HYPE have been redeemed and destroyed by the protocol, allowing HYPE to rank as the 11th largest cryptocurrency by market value globally. The supply is trending towards contraction, making it more suitable as collateral compared to Bitcoin and Ethereum, thus building a more solid value foundation for DeFi applications. In contrast, while Bitcoin is widely recognized by institutions, its role is more akin to a digital commodity; Ethereum has a certain deflationary tendency (such as fee burning under the EIP-1559 mechanism), but still faces ongoing ecological inflation and selling pressure. HYPE, on the other hand, continuously feeds back its value through the rapid growth of on-chain transactions, forming an endogenous value support.
More importantly, Hyunsu emphasized, "HYPE has a strong growth story behind it." As a high-performance on-chain trading platform, Hyperliquid's daily trading volume and user metrics continue to rise, bringing growth potential linked to HYPE's business fundamentals. In comparison, Bitcoin has matured over years of development, with limited "narrative space," and its exposure nature is nearly commoditized.
In contrast, HYPE has not yet been widely held by large institutions or retail investors, presenting a new high-growth exposure opportunity for traditional investors. "HYPE has two major advantages as a treasury asset: first, HYPE is a 'productive asset' that can provide practical benefits such as trading fee discounts when staked; second, HYPE has not been widely held, allowing us to offer the market a valuable unique exposure," Hyunsu explained. These two points allow Eyenovia to stand out among many companies attempting to create "crypto asset treasuries," also providing a sustainable on-chain revenue path (such as staking rewards and node profit sharing), rather than merely passively waiting for token appreciation.
From a broader market demand perspective, Hyunsu believes that "HYPE, as a new type of collateral asset, can also be understood and accepted by traditional finance practitioners." In the current macro environment, asset selection is becoming increasingly critical, and HYPE's highlights in user growth and token economic design give it a natural advantage, likely meeting some institutional investors' demand for high-growth on-chain asset allocations.
At the same time, the rise of decentralized perpetual contract markets is also attracting the attention of traditional finance. "Liquidity attracts liquidity," Hyunsu pointed out, "including traditional institutions like BlackRock, JPMorgan, PayPal, and Robinhood recently making moves in the blockchain space, indicating that the on-chain market is becoming a new arena, and the on-chain perpetual trading market for non-crypto assets will unleash a larger demand pool." This means that platforms like Hyperliquid, which provide on-chain high-frequency trading, still have significant growth potential, and holding HYPE is akin to participating in the equity of this emerging "financial engine."
A Lifeline or Exit Liquidity?
Undeniably, HYPE has injected a lifeline into Eyenovia. However, can betting on HYPE truly establish a sustainable, dividend-paying, and governable on-chain financial model? Can the compounding logic envisioned by Eyenovia support the financial paradigm shift of future US-listed companies? Or will it ultimately become merely a "liquidity exit" channel for early Hyperliquid whales? These questions have sparked heated discussions in the community.
In response, Hyunsu told BlockBeats, "Any conscious on-chain participation is an important part of enhancing the awareness and usage of the Hyperliquid ecosystem." In other words, even if Eyenovia's current strategy is primarily to hold and stake HYPE rather than develop killer applications, as long as the company is deeply involved in the ecosystem with real capital, its actions will inherently expand Hyperliquid's influence and user base. For this reason, Eyenovia is not concerned about external criticisms of "just hoarding tokens without building."
Facing the skepticism that "if HYPE is mainly acquired through OTC and not invested in ecological construction, it may become an exit channel for early whales," Hyunsu stated that Eyenovia has a fiduciary duty to its shareholders and must execute its HYPE treasury strategy with the highest efficiency. If future opportunities arise to acquire large amounts of HYPE at a discount through OTC, the company will prudently decide whether to participate based on the situation.
But for now, he does not believe that Eyenovia's purchases provide an exit channel for early whales, as the unlocking of HYPE for core contributors of Hyperliquid will not begin until November 2025, and all early airdrop tokens of HYPE have already been unlocked and circulated. However, according to MAX, no team members are currently prepared to sell their locked tokens, and there is no significant selling pressure from locked tokens waiting to be released in the market.
The over one million HYPE tokens purchased by Eyenovia were all acquired from the secondary market, which has, to some extent, reduced market selling pressure. Additionally, by collaborating with compliant custodians and trading platforms like Anchorage, the company ensures the transparency and legality of the purchasing process, striving to protect the interests of minority shareholders.
Of course, any strategy involving high-volatility assets cannot avoid the issue of risk management. If HYPE's price were to plummet significantly in the future, would it deal a fatal blow to Eyenovia's operations and finances? In response, Hyunsu provided a series of contingency plans. He stated that the company has developed a plan to hedge exposures if necessary. When deploying the HYPE treasury, Eyenovia is more focused on fixed income generated from staking or income paths with low correlation to market trends, thereby reducing dependence on token price fluctuations.
Hyunsu did not disclose more specific details, but based on what he revealed, the team may use synthetic yield realization (such as utilizing derivatives to lock in some book profits) and protective options to hedge against downside risks. If the HYPE market conditions deteriorate sharply, these hedging strategies will act as shock absorbers, protecting the stability of the company's balance sheet and shareholder value.
CEX Dragon-Slaying Techniques?
Looking ahead, whether Eyenovia's "on-chain micro-strategy" experiment will succeed remains to be seen.
On one hand, whether the Hyperliquid ecosystem can continue to maintain rapid growth and whether the HYPE token model can prove its long-term value in the new cycle are key factors determining the success or failure of Eyenovia's financial transformation; on the other hand, the dynamics of mainstream institutions like Coinbase and Robinhood entering the compliant perpetual market in the US also add external competitive pressure to Hyperliquid.
It can be said that Eyenovia is at the forefront of the intersection between traditional finance and the crypto world, with each step of exploration filled with uncertainty.
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