When the traders started firing silver on the chain:

Original by: Curly North, Deep tide TechFlow

Over the past month, the encryption market has focused its attention on bitcoin's multiple saws or on the silver and gold market. But in this boredom, a platform is completing a quiet attack, Hyperliquid。

Three numbers to make clear what happened

Data first. On Monday, 27 January, Hyperliquid ' s HIP-3 open contract volume reached a record high of $793 million. A month ago, that figure was just 260 million。

WHAT'S HIP-3

In short, Hyperliquid was launched last October as an "unlicensed contract deployment" feature. Any person who pledges 500,000 HYPE tokens can issue a permanent contract market on the platform. It sounds technical, but it turns out to be real, and it's on line in less than four months, creating $25 billion in cumulative transactions。

The second is more interesting。

CEO Jeff Yan of Hyperliquid recently tanned a comparison: the BTC contract for renewal on the platform had a price difference of only US$ 1 and the price difference for BAN was US$ 5.5. At the depth of the order book, Hyperliquid has 140 BTCs on certain prices, and only 80 coins。

What does that mean? This means that in the matter of liquidity, a go-to-centre exchange is beginning to break hands with the largest central exchange worldwide。

The third data is most easily ignored, but it may be the most critical: the silver-for-life contract reaches $1.25 billion in 24 hours on Hyperliquid, making it the third largest target on the platform after BTC and ETH. The volume of gold for sustainable contracts also reached $131 million。

The most popular trade varieties on the encryption exchange are increasingly dominated by traditional precious metals。

How does mobility get up

Hyperliquid's liquidity growth followed a classic "flyer effect"。

In the beginning, the platform uses the HyperBFT consensus algorithm to confirm the speed of transactions at 0.2 seconds, processing 200,000 orders per second. This performance data allows professionals to come in and try the water。

Once the marketer finds out "the chain can be traded so quickly", he invests more money in liquidity. As soon as mobility is high, the loosers and institutional traders find the slides low, and the trading experience close to the currency, they move the list over here。

The volume of transactions has risen, and market traders have earned money from their fee shares and continue to increase their inputs. With more money coming in and deeper in the order book and larger single transactions that can be carried, hedge funds and quantitative teams also began to include Hyperliquid。

Now, Hyperliquid accounts for about 70 per cent of the balance in the market for the decentralised and lasting contract, several times the second place. The gap is still widening。

Precious metal deal

How can a silver-and-gold contract be the home of precious metals trading in an encrypted exchange

In 2025, gold rose 67 per cent, the largest annual increase in 45 years. Silver went up by 145%, and this year it went up by 53%, and the price went up by $117 per ounce。

THE GLOBAL CENTRAL BANK IS BUYING GOLD, ETF IS BUYING GOLD, AND THE DIASPORA IS BUYING GOLD. THE "INFLATION DEAL" BECAME A CONSENSUS — IT WAS FELT THAT GOVERNMENTS PRINTED MONEY TO FLY, THE FRENCH CURRENCY DEPRECIATED AND HARD ASSETS PRESERVED。

The problem, however, is that the gold futures threshold in traditional financial markets is high, leverage is limited and KYC is needed. And on Hyperliquid, you can use 50-100 leverage to trade in a permanent contract of gold, without identification, with a highly efficient fund。

So, a group of hedge funds and commodity traders who trade gold in COMEX began to try to open a warehouse on Hyperliquid. They came in for gold, but soon realized, "The original chain was so convenient, BTC, ETH."。

This is the logic of the migration of users: using a familiar target (gold) to lure traders from traditional financial markets into the chain and then let them find themselves trading opportunities for encrypted assets。

TradeXYZ, HIP-3's largest market deployer, now accounts for 90% of the HIP-3 trade. Its three largest markets are XYZ100 (tracking the index of the former 100 companies), silver and British Wida stock contracts, with cumulative transactions of 12.7 billion, 3 billion and 1.2 billion dollars, respectively。

It's no longer an "encrypted original" exchange, more like an "all-asset exchange."。

Valuation logic and risk

The HYPE has increased 50% within a week, and the price is back around $32. The logic behind this is straightforward: Hyperliquid spent 97 per cent of its revenue from protocol fees on buy-back and destruction of hype. The greater the volume of transactions, the greater the transaction costs, the greater the demand for HYPE repurchases。

WHEN THE BALANCE OF THE HIP-3 STOCK RISES FROM 260 MILLION TO 793 MILLION, WHEN THE SINGLE-DAY TRANSACTION OF THE SILVER-FOR-LIFE CONTRACT EXCEEDS $1.2 BILLION, THESE FIGURES ARE TRANSLATED INTO REAL TRANSACTION REVENUE AND EVENTUALLY INTO A HYPE BUYOUT。

But risks are also accumulating. The current completely diluted estimate for HYPE (FDV) of over $30 billion has fully priced "Hyperliquid became the top three DEX" expectations。

Short-term risks include:

Supervised raid. US SEC or CFTC may apply pressure if they conclude that Hyperliquid's contract for precious metals is an "unregistered commodity futures". While decentrization agreements are theoretically "not shut down", regulatory pressure scares off municipal and institutional funding。

Competition intensified. Exchanges are staring at the cake, which is a large commodity and a fair share, with the possibility of introducing lower-cost or higher-performance products at any time。

HOWEVER, FROM A TRADER'S POINT OF VIEW, AS LONG AS THE OPEN VOLUME OF THE HIP-3 CONTINUES TO BE HIGH, AS LONG AS THE BTC ORDER BOOK CONTINUES TO BE CLOSE TO CURRENCY, AS LONG AS THE TRADE IN PRECIOUS METALS CONTINUES TO GROW, THE THREE INDICATORS REMAIN INTACT, AND THE HYPE IS STILL IN THE UPLINK。

Bottom logic: decentralised efficiency revolution

The story of Hyperliquid is essentially a "decented efficiency revolution"。

IN THE PAST, THE CORE SELLING POINT TO THE CENTRALIZED EXCHANGE WAS "SAFE" AND WHEN CEX STORMED, THE CHAIN EXCHANGE BECAME A REFUGE. IT'S A PASSIVE, DEFENSIVE VALUE。

NOW, HEAD DEX BEGINS TO SHOW THE ABILITY TO "ACTIVELY ATTACK":WITH FASTER, LOWER SLIDES, RICHER PRODUCTS, THE CEX MARKET SHARE IS TAKEN DIRECTLY。

The daily trade volume of Hyperliquid has stabilized three to five times as high as dYdX, in some small currencies, even close to the depth of the deal。

The power structure of the market as a whole is redefined when the experience of trading in the chain is endlessly close to a centralized exchange, and when users no longer need to sacrifice efficiency for "de-centre"。

The outbreak of permanent contracts for precious metals is only the first step in this transformation. When more and more traditional assets have sufficient liquidity in the chain, and when more and more traditional traders find that “the original go-to-centre exchange can be so useful”, the next step is the full chaining of stocks, foreign exchange and large commodities。

Hyperliquid is fighting more like a quiet infiltration。

THE $793 MILLION HIP-3 SHORTFALL IS ONLY A MILESTONE IN THE INFILTRATION WAR。