BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes predicts the decentralized exchange token Hyperliquid (HYPE) could reach $150 by August 2026, a five-fold increase from its current price. He bases this on the platform’s revenue model, which uses 97% of earnings to buy back and burn tokens, and its potential growth from new on-chain perpetual markets.
Despite a slowly rising crypto market, the Fear and Greed Index remains in “Extreme Fear.” Arthur Hayes suggests looking at decentralized exchanges instead of focusing on short-term price moves. He notes platforms like GMX grew during sideways markets by earning consistent trading fees.
Hayes believes Hyperliquid could follow a similar path as more trading moves on-chain. The platform uses about 97% of its revenue to buy back and burn HYPE tokens, reducing supply. “My August 2026 target price for $HYPE is $150, which is roughly 5x higher than its current price of ~$30 at the time of writing this essay,” Hayes stated.
For this target, Hyperliquid’s annualized revenue needs to grow from about $843 million to roughly $1.4 billion. A key driver is HIP-3, which allows permissionless perpetual markets for assets like the Nasdaq-100.
Hayes also highlighted the platform’s low Average Daily Volume to Open Interest (ADV/OI) ratio among top decentralized exchanges. “Hyperliquid’s volumes are the most real out of the top 5 perp DEXs because its ADV/OI ratio is the lowest,” he said.
The HYPE token was trading around $35, with a recent 24-hour gain of over 13%. On-chain data from Santiment shows developer activity was strong earlier this year while market sentiment lagged, though sentiment has recently begun to recover.
