Hyperliquid After Trump's Mention: HYPE's Bull and Bear Case

On August 19, at the White House, President Trump said CFTC Chairman Mike Selig is working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States “in a fully compliant and legal fashion.” HYPE, Hyperliquid’s token, rose 11% afterwards and on September 6 hit the highest price in its history, while many other altcoins were falling.

But the man Trump named is being sued by America’s biggest futures exchange over exactly the kind of contract Hyperliquid runs, and behind the chart, the platform’s revenue is shrinking. Ripple also connected its institutional clients to Hyperliquid back in February, so the outcome touches XRP holders too. Here is the lawsuit, the case for HYPE, the case against it, and where Ripple fits.

Why is the CME suing the CFTC?

The lawsuit decides whether Trump’s comment can actually happen. In June, the CME Group, the largest futures exchange in the US, sued the CFTC and Chairman Mike Selig. It did so because in May the CFTC approved perpetual contracts from Kalshi and Coinbase. CME Chairman Terry Duffy argues that a contract that never expires is not a future at all, but a swap.

The difference matters:

• A future has a fixed date. Agree today to buy oil at $80 in three months, and on that day the contract closes and settles, whatever happened in between.
• A swap has no end date. The two sides keep paying each other the difference for as long as the contract stays open.

Futures trade on exchanges like the CME under CFTC rules. Swaps fall under much stricter rules written after the 2008 crash. If a judge decides perpetuals are swaps, they cannot come into the US by this route, and Trump’s plan becomes much harder to deliver.

Why would an exchange sue its own regulator? The video points to JPMorgan, which warned in August that traders could come to prefer perpetuals on US-regulated platforms. If Americans can trade perpetuals legally at home, many could stop trading the dated futures the CME earns from. In the video’s reading, CME is protecting its business model, not fighting a coin.

Who is already connected to Hyperliquid?

Much of the industry, before Trump said its name:

Date	Development
February 4	Ripple connected Ripple Prime, its institutional brokerage, so its largest clients could trade on Hyperliquid
May	Coinbase took on managing the USDC dollars that Hyperliquid’s markets run on
August 19	Coinbase began sending users of its Base app into Hyperliquid’s markets, though not in the US yet
August 31	Bloomberg reported that Kraken’s parent company is pitching the CFTC on letting Americans trade contracts linked to Hyperliquid’s markets

Binance founder CZ said after Trump’s comments that if Hyperliquid is allowed in the US, it is a win for the whole industry. In his words, Hyperliquid is “the tip,” and once it goes in, everything else can follow.

What is the bull case for HYPE?

Hyperliquid is an exchange for perpetual futures, bets on a coin’s price that never expire. It takes a small fee on every trade, and the video says those fees came to roughly $700 million over the last 12 months.

The video lists several features that set the token apart:

• No venture fund allocation. When HYPE launched on November 29, 2024, 31% of the coins went free to people who used the platform and 0% to venture funds. The host argues that with most coins, early funds buy cheaply and later sell to retail buyers, and that this structure avoids that.
• Fee-funded buybacks. Most of the platform’s fee income goes into buying HYPE on the open market.
• A supply reduction. In December 2025, validators voted 85% in favor of counting about 37 million of the bought-back coins as permanently burned.

The video contrasts this with Sui, which it says sold 14% of its supply to venture funds and is now down 86% from its all-time high. Over the same period, it says HYPE went from $25.44 on January 1 to $89.60 on September 6.

What is the bear case?

The video gives at least as much space to this side:

• Shrinking revenue. So far in 2026, Hyperliquid has made $424 million, 22% less than the same stretch last year. The host notes this fits a bear market, but it means the price tripled while revenue fell.
• A smaller cut. CoinDesk wrote on August 9 that Hyperliquid has never kept a smaller share of what its contracts earn.
• Concentrated control. Four validators run by the Hyper Foundation control 44.6% of the stake.
• Past interventions. In March 2025, when a trade in a meme coin called Jelly threatened large losses, the validators shut down that market. Bitget’s CEO said at the time the platform could become “FTX 2.0.”
• Scale of failures. On October 10, 2025, around $10 billion was liquidated on the platform in a single day.
• Illicit flows. On August 31, CoinDesk reported that North Korean hackers were moving tens of millions of dollars through the platform.
• Supply unlocks. Only about 22% of HYPE is in circulation, and around $750 million worth of new coins unlocks each month.
• Money leaving. HYPE ETFs lost about $26 million in the week of September 7, and BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes sold his entire position in June.

The host is explicit that he is not saying HYPE will go up or down, only laying out both sides. He adds that the opposite argument can be made: revenue is shrinking because of the bear market and could recover in a bull market.

Is Hyperliquid a threat to XRP?

The video argues not. Ripple was one of the first big names to connect to Hyperliquid, on February 4. The brokerage it used is Hidden Road, which Ripple bought in 2025 for around $1.25 billion and renamed Ripple Prime. Every Ripple institutional client trading on Hyperliquid does so through a business Ripple owns, so Ripple has a reason to want Hyperliquid to succeed.

The host also points to Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse’s view that there will be many winners in a multi-chain world, with companies choosing different chains for different problems. At the same White House event, before mentioning Hyperliquid, Trump thanked Garlinghouse by name and urged Congress to pass the CLARITY Act, the market structure bill that would set rules for coins like XRP.

In the video’s framing, Washington is building more than one road: one for trading on-chain assets and one for moving value between institutions and banks. The two projects do different jobs, and the video says neither is a reason to swap one for the other.

What to watch next

1. The CME lawsuit. A ruling that perpetuals are swaps would block this route into the US.
2. The CFTC’s decision on Kraken’s proposal to let Americans trade contracts linked to Hyperliquid’s markets.
3. Monthly unlocks of around $750 million, against buyback volume.
4. Platform revenue, to see whether the 22% decline reverses.
5. Validator concentration, and any change to the Hyper Foundation’s 44.6% share.

The video’s closing lesson is about reading past headlines. Buying because a president said a name, or panicking because Ripple seemed to join a competitor, both miss facts that were public months earlier.