Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX and chief investment officer at Maelstrom, has set a $150 price target for Hyperliquid (HYPE) by August 2026 — roughly five times its current trading price of about $30 — arguing in a new essay that the dominant perpetual decentralized exchange can keep growing revenues even if broader crypto markets remain under pressure.
What Happened: Hayes Bets Big on HYPE
In the blog post published Mar. 7, Hayes laid out a detailed financial model projecting Hyperliquid's 30-day annualized revenue run rate climbing from $843M to $1.4B between March and August. That $1.4B figure is not aspirational — Hyperliquid already hit it last August before pulling back.
Hayes pointed to the protocol's HIP-3 feature, which allows permissionless listing of perpetual contracts, as the primary growth engine. Markets for silver, gold, the Nasdaq 100, and the S&P 500 created through HIP-3 already account for roughly 10% of total Hyperliquid revenues, despite being only months old. His model assumes HIP-3 revenue will rise 160% over six months.
He also noted that 97% of Hyperliquid's revenue is used to buy back HYPE tokens from the open market, a share he described as unmatched across crypto.
Hayes applied a forward P/E multiple of 25.2 — roughly in line with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange but well below Robinhood and Coinbase — to arrive at his target. Even in a stress scenario with lower multiples and higher team token distributions, he estimated the price would reach $58, about 75% above current levels.
Maelstrom disclosed it began accumulating HYPE in the mid-$20 range and said it has become the fund's largest liquid altcoin position, with the team selling other holdings to increase exposure.
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Why It Matters: DEX Revenue vs. Competition
Hayes built much of his case around a metric he considers more reliable than headline trading volume: the ratio of average daily volume to open interest (ADV/OI). He argued that Hyperliquid has the lowest such ratio among the top five perpetual DEXs, suggesting its volumes are less inflated by wash trading or liquidity farming than competitors.
Order book snapshots included in the essay showed that executing large trades — at $1M and $10M notional sizes — was cheapest on Hyperliquid in most cases.
Hayes concluded that even if rival platforms charge lower taker fees, real traders will gravitate toward deeper liquidity.
Still, the thesis carries notable risks that Hayes himself acknowledged. A coming HIP-4 feature for prediction markets was excluded from his model because pre-launch revenue is hard to forecast.
And if Hyperliquid fails to grow revenue from current levels, he wrote, the token simply will not rise. Bitcoin (BTC) market conditions remain a factor as well — HYPE hit its all-time high near $60 last September before falling alongside the broader market to a low around $20 in recent weeks.
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