Good Morning, Asia. Here is what’s making information within the markets:
Welcome to Asia Morning Briefing, a day by day abstract of prime tales throughout U.S. hours and an summary of market strikes and evaluation. For an in depth overview of U.S. markets, see CoinDesk’s Crypto Daybook Americas.
Crypto’s subsequent $200 billion valuation debate might already be taking form, and it appears to be like so much like Solana did final cycle, in keeping with a brand new report from Cantor Fitzgerald, which initiates protection of Hyperion DeFi (HYPD) and Hyperliquid Methods (PURR).
Cantor frames the equities as greater than passive digital asset treasury firms (DATs). In contrast to standard DATs that merely warehouse tokens and anticipate worth appreciation, each firms are positioned as yield-generating individuals within the Hyperliquid ecosystem by staking, validation, and market-building exercise.
That operational publicity underpins a valuation thesis that treats Hyperliquid much less like a speculative DeFi protocol and extra like a layer 1 platform enterprise, echoing the bull instances as soon as utilized to Solana.
In Cantor’s 10-year mannequin, Hyperliquid generates greater than $5 billion in annual charges and is valued at a 50x a number of, implying a HYPE market capitalization north of $200 billion, with HYPD and PURR providing public-market entry to that upside by way of energetic balance-sheet deployment relatively than easy token custody.
The comparability issues as a result of it reframes how decentralized exchanges are being valued. In Solana’s case, traders finally moved previous treating the token as a speculative throughput play and started modeling it as monetary infrastructure able to producing sturdy money flows.
Cantor is making the identical argument for Hyperliquid, pointing to the protocol’s charge construction, the place roughly 99% of buying and selling income is recycled into token buybacks, straight linking quantity development to produce discount relatively than shareholder dilution.
Cantor argues these charges are coming from an addressable market nonetheless dominated by centralized exchanges, the place perpetual futures volumes exceeded $60 trillion in 2025.
Even modest share good points from these venues translate into a whole lot of billions of {dollars} in incremental quantity and a whole lot of thousands and thousands in further annual charges, anchoring Hyperliquid’s development case in migration of present liquidity relatively than speculative demand creation.
The report additionally addresses rising aggressive considerations, significantly round Aster, a rival perp DEX backed by Binance-affiliated pursuits that briefly surpassed Hyperliquid in month-to-month quantity.
Cantor argues that Aster’s exercise is closely inflated by points-based incentives and airdrop farming, noting unusually excessive volume-to-open-interest ratios that recommend buying and selling pushed by rewards relatively than directional conviction. As these incentives fade, Cantor expects liquidity to consolidate again towards venues providing deeper books, higher execution, and sustainable charge fashions.
Whether or not markets finally underwrite a 50x a number of for a leverage-driven buying and selling community stays an open query, however the truth that the controversy now mirrors Solana’s personal evolution suggests Hyperliquid is being judged by a well-recognized, and way more bold, valuation normal.
Market Actions:
BTC: Bitcoin was little modified close to $87,572, up 0.2% on the hour and a couple of.0% over 24 hours, however nonetheless down 4.9% on the week and seven.8% over 30 days.
ETH: Ether traded round $2,954, edging up 0.4% on the hour and day, whereas underperforming long term with a ten.9% weekly drop and a 4.6% decline over 30 days.
Gold: Gold is buying and selling choppily close to the highest of its vary, with indicators of short-term exhaustion pointing to a attainable pullback towards $4,200 as merchants brace for central financial institution choices, even because the broader uptrend stays intact.
Nikkei 225: Asia-Pacific markets traded combined Wednesday as Japan’s exports beat expectations, equities had been principally regular throughout the area, and oil costs rose on contemporary Venezuela sanctions headlines, whereas U.S. shares closed decrease in a single day amid jobs information uncertainty.
Elsewhere in Crypto
