Good morning, Asia. Here’s what’s making news in the markets:
Welcome to the Asia Morning Briefing, a daily overview of top stories in US hours and an overview of market movements and analysis. For a detailed overview of US markets, see CoinDesk’s Crypto Diary Americas.
Crypto’s next $200 billion valuation debate may already be taking shape, and it looks a lot like Solana did last cycle, according to a new report from Cantor Fitzgerald, which is initiating coverage on Hyperion DeFi (HYPD) and Hyperliquid Strategies (PURR).
Cantor frames the shares as more than passive digital asset treasury companies (DATs). Unlike conventional DATs that simply store tokens and wait for price appreciation, both companies are positioned as profit-generating participants in the Hyperliquid ecosystem through staking, validation and market-building activity.
The operational exposure supports a valuation thesis that treats Hyperliquid less as a speculative DeFi protocol and more as a Tier 1 platform company, echoing the bull-cases once applied to Solana.
In Cantor’s 10-year model, Hyperliquid generates more than $5 billion in annual fees and is valued at a 50x multiple, implying a HYPE market cap north of $200 billion, with HYPD and PURR offering public market access to this upside via active balance sheet implementation rather than simple token custody.
The comparison is significant because it reframes how decentralized exchanges are valued. In Solana’s case, investors eventually moved past treating the token as a speculative play through and started modeling it as financial infrastructure capable of generating lasting cash flows.
Cantor makes the same argument for Hyperliquid, pointing to the protocol’s fee structure, where around 99% of trading revenue is recycled into token buybacks, directly linking volume growth to supply reduction rather than shareholder dilution.
Cantor argues that these fees come from an addressable market still dominated by centralized exchanges, where perpetual futures volumes exceeded $60 trillion by 2025.
Even modest equity gains from these venues translate into hundreds of billions of dollars in incremental volume and hundreds of millions in additional annual fees, anchoring Hyperliquid’s growth case in migration of existing liquidity rather than speculative demand creation.
The report also addresses growing competitive concerns, particularly around Aster, a rival perp DEX backed by Binance-affiliated interests that briefly surpassed Hyperliquid in monthly volume.
Cantor argues that Aster’s activity is heavily inflated by points-based incentives and airdrop farming, noting unusually high volume-to-open interest ratios that suggest trading driven by rewards rather than directional conviction. As those incentives fade, Cantor expects liquidity to consolidate back toward venues that offer deeper books, better execution and sustainable fee models.
Whether the markets will ultimately subscribe to a 50x multiple for a leveraged trading network is still an open question, but the fact that the debate now mirrors Solana’s own development suggests that Hyperliquid is being judged by a familiar and far more ambitious valuation standard.
Market movements:
BTC: Bitcoin was little changed near $87,572, up 0.2% on the hour and 2.0% over 24 hours, but still down 4.9% on the week and 7.8% over 30 days.
ETH: Trading around $2,954, Ether was up 0.4% on the hour and day, while in the longer term it underperformed with a 10.9% weekly decline and a 4.6% 30-day decline.
Gold: Gold is trading choppy near the top of its range, with signs of short-term exhaustion pointing to a possible pullback towards $4,200 as traders prepare for central bank decisions, although the broader uptrend remains intact.
Nikkei 225: Asia-Pacific markets traded mixed on Wednesday as Japan’s exports beat expectations, stocks were mostly steady across the region and oil prices rose on fresh Venezuela sanctions headlines, while US stocks closed lower overnight on uncertainty over jobs data.
Elsewhere in Crypto
- US Senate’s Warren calls for Trump-tied crypto probe as market structure drags out (CoinDesk)
- Coinbase Risks Crypto ‘Cannibalization’ With Market Push Prediction: Mizuho (Decrypt)
