Hyperliquid price to $150? Arthur Hayes makes bold prediction for HYPE token

Maelstrom, the family office of crypto investor and influencer Arthur Hayes, has amassed a large position in Hyperliquid just months after warning the exchange was overvalued.

Hyperliquid’s HYPE token is now the fund’s largest non-Bitcoin position, Hayes said in a lengthy newsletter post on Monday.

It would pay off handsomely if Hayes’ forecast comes to pass: He predicts that HYPE tokens will hit $150 by August, a fivefold increase from their Monday price. He cited Hyperliquid’s aggressive buyback programme, the rapid growth of its permissionless markets, and the end of competitors’ incentive campaigns.

HYPE has soared more than 9% since Hayes’ comments were published.

The surge can also be attributed to traders rushing in to trade tokenised oil perpetuals on the decentralised exchange over the weekend amid the escalating conflict in the Middle East.

More than $160 million in oil contract volume changed hands on Hyperliquid in the past 24 hours.

“Pandora’s box is open,” Hyunsu Jung, CEO of Hyperliquid treasury firm Hyperion DeFi, told DL News. “The narrative around onchain financial services is changing.”

History of predictions

Hayes is and influential trader. But the BitMEX founder is known for making bold predictions, only to quickly reverse course.

Last year, he predicted Hyperliquid’s annualised fees would grow more than 100-fold by 2028, to $258 billion. A month later, a Maelstrom colleague published a report arguing HYPE would take a hit as its creators began selling previously locked tokens, and the fund sold some $5 million in HYPE.

Since then, HYPE has fallen from about $45 per token. It hit an eight-month low of $20 at the end of January, but has since recovered to about $34.

While Bitcoin continues to trade below $70,000 — far from the all-time high it hit last year — exchanges such as Hyperliquid can see profits rise even during downturns, Hayes argued. That’s because a downswing in prices can lead to increased trading and, in turn, exchange revenue.

Moreover, Hyperliquid spends roughly 97% of its revenue on buying back its token.

“No other project in all of crypto hands as much money back to token holders as Hyperliquid,” Hayes wrote.

His $150 price target requires Hyperliquid to grow its 30-day, annualised revenue to $1.4 billion, a figure it hit last August. Hayes says that is possible if the outsize growth of Hyperliquid’s permissionless markets, introduced in October, continues over the next several months.

“Hyperliquid must give traders something new and shiny to trade on-chain,” he wrote.

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at aleks@dlnews.com.