What HYPE really wants to challenge may not be $100 HYPE has once again set a new historical high, breaking through $96 during trading. Based on the upper limit of approximately 1 billion tokens, HYPE's fully diluted valuation has approached $94 billion You may not know that the latest market value of Nasdaq is about 52.9 billion US dollars, and the London Stock Exchange Group is about 53.3 billion US dollars, totaling about 106.2 billion US dollars That is to say, if HYPE rises about 13% from its current price to around $106, its FDV may exceed the combined market value of these two traditional exchange groups $100 is only about 6% away from now Of course, this is not a comparison of exactly the same caliber HYPE uses FDV, which is a theoretical valuation calculated based on the total supply of tokens; NASDAQ and the London Stock Exchange Group use the actual market value corresponding to the current issued stocks The market is pricing the future of Hyperliquid at prices close to those of major global exchange groups Yesterday we discussed why HYPE's FDV can reach 10 times that of UNI One important reason is that the market does not view Hyperliquid solely as a Crypto perpetual contract platform, but rather as paying a premium for its potential to become an on chain price discovery and trading infrastructure Grayscale's latest article adds a real-life example to this logic Kraken's parent company Payward plans to bring on chain perpetual contracts based on Hyperliquid infrastructure to eligible US customers through the licensed HIP-3 market According to Payward's announced plan, its CFTC regulated Bitnomial will be responsible for creating and managing the market, as well as undertaking contract clearing and settlement; NinjaTrader Clearing is responsible for hosting customer accounts, and only users who have completed account opening and entered the whitelist of both parties can trade The underlying public blockchain, on chain order book, and matchmaking system using Hyperliquid are the responsibility of licensed institutions for user access, customer accounts, clearing, and regulatory responsibilities It points to a new possibility: traditional financial institutions may not necessarily need to rebuild an on chain trading system, but can also integrate their licenses, customers, and compliance systems into the infrastructure already running on Hyperliquid Hyperliquid already has a strong starting point According to Grayscale's cited data, in the second quarter of 2026, Hyperliquid's average open interest contracts were approximately $9 billion, a year-on-year increase of 54% According to its statistical caliber, Hyperliquid is the only major perpetual contract platform to achieve year-on-year growth If Payward's plan is ultimately approved and the transaction volume generated by US users is also completed through the Hyperliquid infrastructure, and transaction fees are paid to the protocol, then this newly added market may enter HYPE's revenue and repurchase loop The transaction volume increases, the handling fee increases, and the funds used to purchase HYPE increase This is the core logic behind the market's willingness to continuously raise the valuation of HYPE But the nearly $106 billion FDV also means that the market has already anticipated very high expectations in advance There is currently no answer as to whether Payward's market will be approved, when it will be launched, how many users it can attract, and whether it will generate significant revenue for the Hyperliquid protocol HYPE needs to prove that it's not just about being able to break through $100 $106 is a more symbolic valuation threshold Because once there, HYPE's FDV will begin to challenge the combined market capitalization of Nasdaq and the London Stock Exchange Group HYPE Hyperliquid Kraken Nasdaq DeFi