Author: Ishika Kumari, AMB Crypto

Translated by: Peggy, BlockBeats

Editor's note: Against the backdrop of increasing macroeconomic uncertainty and persistently low sentiment in the cryptocurrency market, a curious divergence is emerging: investor sentiment remains in the "extreme fear" range, yet the prices of some assets have started to rise slowly.

Recently, the decentralized derivatives trading platform Hyperliquid (HYPE) has become the focus of community discussion. BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes has publicly set a target price of $150 (about five times the current price), drawing market attention. As of March 12, 2026, the HYPE price was around $36, with a 24-hour increase of about 5% and a cumulative increase of over 11% in nearly 7 days.

Regarding its rising logic, the community has provided various explanations: for example, the platform uses about 97% of its revenue for buybacks and token burns, creating a value capture mechanism directly linked to trading activity; the HIP-3 mechanism allows users to create more types of perpetual markets on-chain, expanding potential trading demand; at the same time, a lower ADV/OI ratio is also viewed by some market participants as a more "real" signal of trading volume.

This article synthesizes the views of Arthur Hayes and several community participants, attempting to understand the structural reasons behind HYPE's recent strength in a market environment where sentiment remains cautious.

Here is the original text:

The cryptocurrency market is currently in a rather delicate state: prices are slowly rising, but investor sentiment remains extremely low.

The Crypto Fear and Greed Index still sits in the "extreme fear" range. However, for seasoned market participants like BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, this divergence between price and sentiment actually releases another signal.

Arthur Hayes: HYPE Target Price $150

Hayes believes that rather than focusing solely on short-term price fluctuations or rashly shorting the market, it is better to shift attention to decentralized exchanges (DEX).

He reviews past market cycles, noting that during the sideways market of 2023, even though traders overall struggled, trading platforms like GMX continued to achieve steady growth through trading fees.

In his view, as more and more trading activities shift on-chain, Hyperliquid (HYPE) could also follow a similar developmental path.

In comparison, institutions like Tether or Circle typically retain profits within the company; whereas Hyperliquid adopts a different mechanism—approximately 97% of its revenue is used for buying back and burning HYPE tokens, thereby reducing market circulation and providing price support in the long term.

Based on this business model, Arthur Hayes believes that HYPE's price has the potential to rise to $150.

"My target price for HYPE in August 2026 is $150. At the price of about $30 when I wrote this article, this means about a fivefold increase."

What Conditions Does Hyperliquid Need to Erupt?

However, to make this target price realistically grounded, Hyperliquid still needs to achieve stronger growth. Currently, the platform's annual revenue is about $843 million, but to support such a valuation, the revenue scale needs to be roughly increased to about $1.4 billion.

One key growth driver may come from HIP-3.

HIP-3 allows users to create permissionless perpetual contract markets on-chain and directly anchor the underlying assets to traditional assets, such as the Nasdaq 100 index or precious metals. To initiate such a market, users need to stake 500,000 HYPE tokens.

Although this mechanism has not been launched for long, HIP-3 has already contributed about 10% of Hyperliquid's revenues. If more traders begin to hedge traditional asset risks on-chain in the future, this business segment may see significant expansion.

The Community is Generally Bullish on HYPE

Echoing Hayes's view, a X user also stated, "Even if the world is at war, holding HYPE may be the best decision."

Tweet content: Why holding HYPE may be the best decision even amid global war. Despite the current crypto space being surrounded by various bad news, HYPE remains one of the best assets.

The Hyperliquid team has hit a perfect timing with the launch of the HIP-3 market. At this stage, the crypto community has greatly lost interest overall, with panic levels hitting a historic high, even more dismal than during the FTX collapse. On Hyperliquid, among the top 30 trading pairs sorted by daily trading volume, only 10 are crypto-related, while the rest are stock market assets.

HIP-3 is an amazing breakthrough and will remain significant for many years to come; Hyperliquid will too—offering the highest liquidity, no KYC, and 24/7 trading.

Jeff is the first to establish such a business model: the token itself truly has meaning within this system. While 99% of projects gradually disappear after launch, HYPE continues to thrive.

Additionally, another user expressed, "As long as global supply shortages lead to skyrocketing prices of certain commodities, Hyperliquid will capture the monetary speculation demand within. The earnings from transaction fees and settlement will flow towards HYPE, allowing it to outperform the market. We saw this phenomenon with gold a few weeks ago, and we are now witnessing the same with crude oil (CL)."

Another important indicator supporting the bullish view is the ADV/OI ratio (Average Daily Volume / Open Interest).

Arthur Hayes cited this indicator, stating, "Among the top five perpetual contract DEXs, Hyperliquid's trading volume is the most genuine because it has the lowest ADV/OI ratio."

However, Hayes also believes that over time and as market conditions change, Hyperliquid's visible share of overall daily trading volume (ADV) will continue to rise.

&HYPE: Price and On-chain Indicators

Meanwhile, at the time of writing, HYPE's trading price is about $34.98, up 13.37% in the past 24 hours. However, despite the strong price performance, on-chain data indicates that market sentiment remains relatively cautious.

Santiment data shows that between mid-January and mid-February, there was a marked divergence between developer construction progress and market sentiment: project development activity continued, but market sentiment towards the project did not warm up accordingly.

Source: Santiment

However, investor sentiment remains negative, primarily because traders are more focused on short-term price fluctuations. Only recently has market sentiment started to recover, indicating that the market may finally be beginning to recognize the platform's increasing practicality and revenue model.

Notably, this is not the first time Hayes has expressed strong confidence in HYPE. As early as February 21, this BitMEX co-founder stated on X that he is continuously increasing his holdings of HYPE, setting a target price of $150.

In his earlier judgment, this target price could be achieved by July 2026; while in the latest prediction, the timeframe has been pushed to around August 2026. However, this premise is contingent upon the protocol achieving approximately $1.4 billion in annual revenue.

Final Summary

Metrics like Hyperliquid's low ADV/OI ratio indicate that its trading activity comes more from genuine users rather than artificially created false trading volume.

Meanwhile, market sentiment remains cautious, indicating that investors are still waiting for clearer signals to confirm that the platform can achieve sustained growth.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。