Hyperliquid founder Jeff Yan met U.S. policymakers in Washington to discuss how onchain derivatives could fit within formal regulation, while CME and ICE kept pressing regulators for stricter oversight.

Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 open interest climbed from $260 million to $790 million in one month, with silver perpetuals leading activity. HYPE rose 20% in 24 hours, while 97% of protocol fees continue to be used for HYPE buybacks and burns.

Hyperliquid has launched prediction markets on mainnet through HIP-4, starting with a Bitcoin direction contract that uses fully collateralized, fixed-payout settlement and removes liquidation risk.

Crypto markets and industry headlines moved on several fronts on July 20. Among the top 10 tokens by CEX trading volume, BANK posted the strongest 24-hour gain at 93.81%, while BTC slipped 0.2% and ETH rose 0.42%. OKX’s 24-hour gainers list was led by NAVX, PUMP, and YB, and GMGN’s on-chain meme rankings showed activity centered on Robinhood Chain and BSC tokens. Outside token performance, several non-crypto developments also drew attention. Spain beat Argentina 1:0 after extra time in the World Cup final, claiming its second title since 2010. ChangXin Technology said winning subscribers in its share offering must complete payment on July 20, with funds from offline investors due by 16:00 on the T+2 settlement day and online investors required to ensure enough subscription funds remain in their accounts by day-end. In business and policy-related updates, Trump Media & Technology Group said its paid data product Truth API will go live on Aug. 1, offering banks and algorithmic trading firms real-time access to posts from 10 influential Truth Social accounts, including Donald Trump. South Korea’s KB Financial Group also unveiled a 100 billion won strategic investment fund focused on digital assets and artificial intelligence, while the U.S. CLARITY Act remained stalled in the Senate one year after passing the House.

Hyperliquid co-founder Jeff Yan said the risk he worries about most is not regulation, rival exchanges, market cycles or smart contract threats, but the steady pull of top young talent toward artificial intelligence. In his view, crypto, fintech and onchain finance still have not attracted enough of the highest-quality founders and engineers, especially at a time when AI offers more capital, more public attention and more startup opportunities. Yan also said he does not spend much of his time watching daily platform metrics such as trading volume, market share or liquidity depth, even though Hyperliquid operates in a highly quantitative market where those figures are closely tracked. He argued that teams that focus too heavily on improving existing metrics by a few percentage points can end up relying on subsidies, short-term campaigns or copycat product work, instead of building something that did not exist before. He pointed to Hyperliquid’s HIP-4 outcome markets as an example of that product approach. Yan said outcome markets should not be viewed only as prediction tools for elections, sports or other events. He described them as a different margin and payout structure, one that could be used to create fully collateralized, capped-loss contracts. He said that framework may be especially relevant for onchain options, where liquidity and capital efficiency have remained major obstacles.

Hyperliquid co-founder Jeff Yan said in a recent appearance on the VALR podcast that one of the biggest problems facing crypto and fintech today is their failure to attract enough top entrepreneurial talent. In his view, the surge of interest in artificial intelligence, along with social prestige factors, has shaped how many high-achieving young people think about career choices. As a result, he said, relatively few of them are choosing to build in crypto. Yan argued that rebuilding financial systems from first principles and turning academic theory into scalable market design remain highly meaningful work. He urged younger founders to look past surface-level value and focus instead on real-world problems, while taking part in the development and innovation of on-chain finance.

Pantera Capital argues that perpetual futures are moving well beyond their crypto-native roots and into the core of global market structure, with Hyperliquid emerging as one of the clearest on-chain expressions of that trend. In a lengthy note, the firm says recent moves by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission mark an important change in Washington’s stance, opening a path for regulated crypto perpetuals under the existing futures framework rather than requiring a brand-new rulebook. The report traces the appeal of perpetuals to their simpler design: no expiry, funding-based price anchoring, easier position management, and round-the-clock trading. Pantera says those traits made digital assets the natural proving ground, citing 2025 centralized exchange perpetual volume of $62 trillion versus roughly $19 trillion in spot volume and $86 trillion in total derivatives volume. Hyperliquid is presented as the main on-chain winner so far. Pantera says the protocol accounts for about 40% of decentralized perpetual volume, with monthly volume above $250 billion and annualized revenue of $800 million. The firm also points to Hyperliquid’s expansion beyond crypto into equities, commodities, indexes, and private companies, alongside growing attention from hedge funds, exchange operators, and public-market vehicles tied to HYPE. At the same time, Pantera flags regulation as the biggest unresolved risk, especially for a permissionless venue without KYC. Its broader argument is that the market has already answered whether perpetuals matter outside crypto; the open question is whether blockchain-based infrastructure can become a major venue for pricing risk across other parts of finance.

In an interview, Hyperliquid founder Jeff Yan shared that his 2018 prediction market project failed despite a solid 'off-chain matching, on-chain settlement' architecture, primarily due to lacking product-market fit as the crypto market turned bearish. He values the lessons and rejoices in peers now driving blockchain adoption.