Hyperliquid HYPE Token Up 80% as Michael Nadeau Flags Slowing Activity

The Hyperliquid HYPE token is having a moment, and a problem. Up 80% over the past 90 days while Bitcoin scraped together a 10% gain, HYPE looks like the kind of trade traders write home about. A new memo from analyst Michael Nadeau says the math under that move is getting uncomfortable. Buyers are paying more for every dollar of revenue Hyperliquid generates, even as some of the protocol's core activity numbers cool off.

Why Is the HYPE Token Trading at a Record Premium?

Short answer: investors are valuing HYPE on a story, not a spreadsheet. Hyperliquid's fully diluted price-to-sales ratio just hit 47.3, a 67% jump quarter-over-quarter and within touching distance of record levels. That kind of multiple expansion almost never shows up in a market dealing with geopolitical noise and risk-off flows.

The kicker, per Michael Nadeau of The DeFi Report, is that this premium is widening at the same time the protocol's revenue line is going the wrong way. Over the last 90 days, Hyperliquid's perpetual DEX generated $153.8 million in fees. That's down 13% from the previous quarter, even if it's still up 12.3% year-over-year.

Here is the part traders should sit with. Ninety-nine percent of those fees go straight into HYPE buybacks. So when fees soften, the engine that has been propping up the token quietly loses horsepower. The price keeps climbing. The fuel tank gets lighter.

Investors are increasingly paying up for each dollar of revenue, as the token's fully diluted price-to-sales ratio reached 47.3, up 67% quarter-over-quarter and nearing record levels.

Trading Volume Holds, Open Interest Doesn't

Average daily trading volume on Hyperliquid sat at $7.07 billion last quarter, a modest 6% bump quarter-over-quarter. That's the headline number bulls love to point at. It's also the easy one to misread.

Look one layer down and the picture changes fast. Open interest has fallen to $7.6 billion, down a brutal 51% from its peak and roughly 15% in the same 90-day window. Open interest measures how much capital is actually parked in active positions, not just how much paper changes hands. When OI craters while volume holds, you're usually watching shorter-term traders churn the same money in and out instead of long-term capital sticking around.

Hyperliquid still leads decentralized perpetual exchanges with a 72% market share. Pull back to include centralized venues like Binance and Bybit, and that figure drops to about 5% of total perp volume. Dominant in its lane. Still a small fish in the broader perp pond.

• Daily trading volume: $7.07 billion average, up 6% quarter-over-quarter
• Open interest: $7.6 billion, down 51% from peak
• DEX market share: 72% of decentralized perpetuals
• Total perp share: roughly 5% when centralized exchanges are included

Capital Is Walking Out the Door

The flows tell their own story. Total capital bridged into Hyperliquid sits at $3.36 billion, down 44% from its peak. Over the last 90 days, $730 million has left the network outright, with $500 million of those outflows arriving since early April.

That's not a slow drift. That's a real exit. And it's happening while the token chart points up and to the right, which is exactly the divergence that should make any holder pause. Price is a vote on the future. Bridged capital is a measurement of who is actually in the room.

Where Hyperliquid Is Actually Growing

Not everything is cooling. Daily active addresses averaged 46,000, up 6.6% quarter-over-quarter, and one product line is genuinely going vertical.

Volumes on HIP-3, the framework that lets third parties launch their own perpetual DEXs on top of Hyperliquid, averaged $2.58 billion per day. That's a 973% quarter-over-quarter jump, and HIP-3 now accounts for 36% of total volume on the platform. In other words, more than a third of Hyperliquid's flow is now coming from builders who are not Hyperliquid.

That's the bull case in one stat. If you believe perpetuals are going to be a multi-trillion-dollar onchain category, having other people build their orderbooks on your stack is the kind of moat that compounds. Solana had this debate for years before Pump.fun and Jito made it real. Hyperliquid is making a similar bet, faster.

The flip side: the HyperEVM ecosystem, the smart-contract layer where general DeFi apps live, brought in just $1.84 million in revenue over the period. That number dropped 33% quarter-over-quarter, and active addresses on HyperEVM also fell. The one bright spot was stablecoin supply on HyperEVM, which climbed to $1.83 billion, driven mostly by USDC.

HIP-3 volumes averaged $2.58 billion per day, up 973% quarter-over-quarter, and accounted for 36% of total volume.

Token Mechanics: Deflation Now, Unlocks Later

Token economics give bulls something to hold onto. Buybacks outpaced issuance over the past 90 days, putting HYPE in net deflation territory. That's the rare green check on a chart full of yellow flags.

But two things deserve a second look. Buyback yield has slipped to 2.55% on a fully diluted basis, meaning each dollar of HYPE is buying less return-of-capital than it used to. And core contributor token unlocks keep hitting the market through 2027. So the deflation we have today is not the deflation we are guaranteed in eighteen months.

Combine slowing fees, falling open interest, capital outflows, and a multi-year unlock schedule, and the math behind a 47.3 price-to-sales ratio starts to look like a story stock with crypto mechanics.

What This Means for HYPE Holders

The honest read is that Hyperliquid is not breaking. It's bifurcating. HIP-3 is exploding. The core perp DEX is still the dominant onchain venue. Active addresses are growing. Those are not signs of a project in trouble.

What's wobbly is the gap between price and the activity that's supposed to justify it. When HYPE trades at a record premium while open interest, bridged capital, and quarterly fees all soften, you are betting the future numbers will catch up to the current valuation, not the other way around.

If HIP-3 keeps compounding at anything close to its current pace, that bet pays off. If the perp market cools further and HyperEVM revenue keeps sliding, the multiple compresses and HYPE catches down to the fundamentals. Pick your camp.

One thing the Nadeau memo makes clear: this is not a project where you can wave at the price chart and call it a thesis. The growth story is real. So is the slowdown. Both are happening at the same time.