How Hyperliquid defied crypto’s DAT death spiral—and built a booming digital asset treasury

Hyperliquid is one of the buzziest blockchains in crypto. Known for its perpetual futures trading platform, it has also achieved a rare feat: building a digital asset treasury, or DAT, that has delivered positive returns for its shareholders. DATs are corporate vehicles designed to acquire and hoard a specific cryptocurrency—Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin behemoth Strategy is the most famous example—but in the last year, their share prices have slumped badly, and some DATs have flamed out altogether. The exception is the DAT called Hyperliquid Strategies, ticker symbol PURR, whose shares have climbed 251% since the start of the year. 

Since Hyperliquid Strategies launched 10 months ago—less than two years after the Hyperliquid blockchain went live—its market capitalization has climbed past $3 billion. The DAT now holds more than 35 million HYPE tokens, the blockchain’s native token, worth roughly $3.3 billion. This twin achievement of expanding its treasury and posting outsize shareholder returns puts the Hyperliquid DAT in stark contrast to its peers. As the chart below shows, the year-to-date returns of the leading DATs dedicated to Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana have been dismal:

So why has Hyperliquid’s DAT flourished while the others have stumbled? Unlike other DATs, Hyperliquid Strategies does more than accumulate tokens and wait for their value to rise. The company has built an operating model that runs like an active business rather than a passive vault. By earning revenue from its holdings, the company can add to its HYPE reserves, increasing the amount of cryptocurrency tied to each share of stock over time. Whether by design or circumstance, Hyperliquid Strategies may have finally cracked the code on how to make DATs viable. 

The remarkable rise of Hyperliquid

In the short time since the Hyperliquid blockchain launched in 2023, its HYPE token has vaulted into the top 10 most valuable cryptocurrencies. A big reason is that, unlike many other crypto projects that seek to build value with hype or vague future promises, Singapore-based Hyperliquid—founded by Harvard grad and physics whiz Jeff Yan—offered a valuable real-world service.

Its decentralized platform offers 24/7 derivatives trading at rapid speeds, and is based around perpetual futures, a novel type of option that doesn’t expire. Following its launch, Hyperliquid initially drew crypto speculators, but soon after attracted a new group of customers: traders who use Hyperliquid to trade tokenized versions of oil, gold and other commodities. 

This new class of traders has carried out huge numbers of transactions on Hyperliquid, which charges small fees in the form of the HYPE token. Hyperliquid uses a portion of those fees to pay the so-called validators who operate the blockchain, but........

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