Silver is now a front-page asset on Hyperliquid, highlighting a subtle shift in how crypto derivatives venues are being used as bitcoin struggles to find direction.
The SILVER-USDC contract has become one of Hyperliquid’s most active markets, trading around $110 in Asian hours and posting around $994 million in 24-hour volume.
Open interest is near $154.5 million, while funding remains slightly negative, indicating heavy turnover and two-way positioning rather than a one-way, leveraged effort. For a crypto-native venue built around perpetuities, the mix looks closer to a volatility and hedging oriented market than a speculative long.
What stands out is not the silver price alone, but its prominence: silver is just behind BTC and ETH pairs in volume, according to CoinGecko data, and ahead of SOL and XRP.
When a commodity contract competes with major crypto assets for volume on a decentralized exchange, it suggests that traders are using crypto infrastructure to express views that bitcoin and ether no longer capture effectively. In other words, crypto plumbing is recycled into macro trades.
This background helps explain why bitcoin itself remains fixed. Glassnode data shows BTC stuck in what it describes as a defensive equilibrium. Spot cumulative volume delta has turned sharply negative, indicating that sellers are bidding for rallies.
ETF flows have cooled, removing an important source of incremental demand. In derivatives, open interest has eased, funding is uneven and options skew has increased, signaling increasing demand for downside protection rather than upside conviction.
The result is a market where bitcoin absorbs pressure without collapsing, but also fails to trend. Price stability near $88,000 masks a lack of aggressive buyers and a reluctance to implement leverage. ETH’s relative underperformance reinforces the message. Risk appetite does not move down the curve.
Bitcoin is not being abandoned. It’s just sidelined. And the increase in silver trading on Hyperliquid is one of the clearest signs yet of where uncertainty is now being priced.
Market movement
BTC: Bitcoin is hovering near $88,000 and trading sideways as selling pressure continues and cautious positioning cap rallies despite the absence of panic selling.
ETH: Ether is trading around $2,300, down on the week and lagging bitcoin as leverage and risk appetite remain muted.
Gold: Gold is extending its breakout, up about 15% over the past 30 days and more than 50% over six months, reinforcing the same macro stress trade emerging in silver as capital gravitates toward hard assets rather than crypto beta.
Nikkei 225: Japan’s Nikkei 225 hovered nearly flat in Asian trade, even as South Korean auto shares swung sharply on renewed U.S. tariff threats, with regional markets mixed and chip-led gains in Seoul and Australia offset weakness in China.
