Even if I might a little bit late to the party, I have still joined it and hyped on HYPE. Sometimes when I need to take a decision it takes more time than needed. Why do I say that? Let's remember that Trump made some comments during August 19, 2026, at the Crypto and Technology Summit at the White House: the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chair Mike Selig is working to bring the decentralized exchange Hyperliquid (HYPE) into the United States in a "fully compliant and legal fashion". And my decision to jump on the wagon came after 1.5 months since that, thus I would call it a delayed decision.
Beside Trump creating buzz on HYPE which reacted right after that and saw a jump in price, I knew about this asset (as you've also probably known) for quite a long time. But for some reason it didn't click or maybe I had already quite a bit of tokens in my portfolio that I didn't react on it. I chose to invest into NEAR instead of HYPE and I said it was enough for me. And that wasn't a bad choice as I am pushing 100% ROI on NEAR token. But in the corner of my mind HYPE was still there and had an inception thought planted for me to find at some point. And these days that just happened as I've seen a bit of decrease of the token up to $85 and I told myself that it is not a bad price point considering that we are nowhere in a bull market cycle.
While I haven't done much DYOR about it as I have been following the token for a while and observed its performance in time, I will leave bellow some cons and pros for it. I found them myself a bit surprising and maybe if I knew them before I wouldn't have jumped right now with the investment, but in the same as I plan to HODL long on it, I think the pros will overpower the cons. Nobody can say that for sure, but up until now HYPE has proven its worth.
Cons (The Downside) 👎
- Upcoming dilution: Hyperliquid is scheduled to conduct a significant $856 million token unlock on Tuesday, October 6, 2026, primarily releasing team and core contributor supply.
- Regulatory target: The platform is currently the center of a major U.S. House oversight about alleged insider trading and a $1.1 billion short position, which could spark sudden regulatory crackdowns.
- Volatility risks: Because its buyback mechanism relies entirely on trading volume, a prolonged crypto bear market or a drop in platform activity would instantly diminish the token's buying support.
- Centralization realities: Despite its "DeFi" branding, core contributor tokens, foundation budgets and future emissions still dominate the total 1-billion token supply cap, raising holder concentration risks.
Pros (The Upside) 👍
- The "Fee Flywheel" buyback: The protocol funnels 97% to 99% of its trading fee revenue directly into continuous, open-market buybacks of HYPE, adding regular buying pressure.
- True revenue backed value: Unlike speculative assets, HYPE's value is heavily tied to a functioning business processing over $200 billion in monthly trading volume.
- Organic distribution: Launched via a massive user airdrop with zero initial Venture Capital (VC) allocations, reducing early dumping pressure from private institutions.
- Deep utility: Serves as the L1 network gas token, offers tiered trading fee discounts (up to 40%) and acts as a mandatory stake for builders wanting to launch new markets.
- U.S. expansion potential: High speculative upside remains if the Trump administration successfully allows it to function under the CFTC.
The primary catalyst driving investor hype on hype 😆 is its revenue-backed buyback model: Hyperliquid routes 97% to 99% of its massive trading fee revenue directly into an automated "Assistance Fund". This fund continuously buys HYPE tokens from the open market and permanently burns 🔥🔥🔥 them, heavily reducing the supply based on real platform utility rather than hype. While the Max Supply = 1 Billion tokens, the Total Supply = 955.307 Millions (already 5% decrease from the max supply) just because of that.
While I cannot tell if this will be an amazing investment, I think that for now the pros are much higher than the cons. In the same if the US play will get to a resolution and receive "fully compliant and legal fashion" mark, probably it will open up to a large market of retail and institutional investors. Its a risky play, but I thought it was worth taking at least for now. And how do I balance that risk? With some other investments in old fashion assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum. This way I obtain a nice blend between stable and proven assets and more riskier ones - like HYPE or NEAR. But also the rewards might be significant if it plays right (which doesn't usually happen, but there is a chance to go that way). But as this is a long play for me and I have the time and patience to see it to fruition, it will just stay in my wallet and hopefully... see it grow. 😊