Morning Minute: Hyperliquid Soars in Pivot to "Trade Everything" Exchange

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner . The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack . GM! Today’s top news: Crypto majors green as dollar dips; BTC at $90k HYPE pops 50% in 2 days, now at $33+ on back of HIP3 growth Tether introduces USAT at first Genius-compliant stable aimed at US Ethereum announced ERC8004 aimed at AI agents and agentic commerce Moonbirds launch BIRB token, debuts at $220M FDV 🚀 HYPE Rips as Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 Turns It Into a “Trade Anything” Exchange Tokenized stocks and metals are driving major growth for one crypto app. And the market is starting to recognize it. 📌 What Happened Hyperliquid’s HYPE token surged 35% to start the week as adoption of HIP-3, its permissionless market creation framework, accelerated sharply. HIP-3 allows third-party builders to launch perpetual markets on Hyperliquid by staking HYPE, opening the door to crypto assets, tokenized stocks, commodities, and other non-crypto perps. Hyperliquid started out with just perps markets on crypto tokens, but via HIP3 they’ve been able to expand into tokenized gold, silver, Google and Tesla stock, amd more. The result has been a rapid expansion in both volume and open interest. According to Flowscan data , HIP-3 markets have now generated over $24 billion in cumulative trading volume, with more than 25 million total trades and roughly 75,000 unique traders to date. Momentum has intensified recently. Daily HIP-3 trading volume has pushed as high as $1.4–$1.5B, while open interest has surged to roughly $790M, up from around $260 million just a month ago. Silver alone did $1.3B+ in trading volume on Monday. As HIP-3 usage climbed, demand for HYPE followed. Builders must stake the token to deploy markets, and increased trading activity feeds back into the protocol’s fee and incentive mechanisms. 🗣️ What They’re Saying “Hyperliquid has quietly achieved an important milestone of becoming the most liquid venue for crypto price discovery in the world… With HIP - 3 teams leading the way, Hyperliquid has also grown to become the most liquid venue for perps on tradfi assets.” - Jeff, founder of Hyperliquid, on X 🧠 Why It Matters Hyperliquid started as a high-performance crypto perps protocol. It is evolving into a “trade everything with perps” exchange, where traders can express views on crypto, equities, metals, and macro themes all from a single platform. That matters in the current macro environment. Gold and silver has gone parabolic as of late, and everyone wants a bite of the apple (even crypto traders). Hyperliquid is capturing that demand onchain and it’s obvious in the metrics, which are up and to the right. For HYPE the token, the implications are direct. More volume leads to more fees which leads to more HYPE token buybacks. And markets are finally starting to price that in...  🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets A few headlines that stood out: Crypto majors are green following a major dip in the US dollar; BTC +2% at $89,900; ETH +4% at $3,030, SOL +2% at $127; XRP +2% to $1.92 HYPE (+22%), JUP (+15%) and CC (+13%) led top movers Gold hit a new ATH at $5,274, up another 4% on the day Ethereum announced its ERC8004 protocol enabling AI agents and agentic transactions Standard Chartered forecasted $500B shifting from bank deposits to stablecoins by 2028 Tether introduced its USAT stablecoin via Anchorage Digital, marking its first GENIUS Act-compliant product aimed at regulated U.S. distribution Tether also revealed to have a nuclear bunker filled with over 140 tons of gold, one of the biggest holdings in the world ERC-8004 is going live on mainnet soon. By enabling discovery and portable reputation, ERC-8004 allows AI agents to interact across organizations ensuring credibility travels everywhere. This unlocks a global market where AI services can interoperate without gatekeepers. https://t.co/Yrl0rvnSxj — Ethereum (@ethereum) January 27, 2026 In Corporate Treasuries / ETFs The BTC ETFs saw $147M in net outflows on Tuesday; ETH ETFs saw $64M in outflows Trump-backed American Bitcoin boosted its Bitcoin treasury to 5,843 BTC worth roughly $512.9M In Memes / Onchain Movers Meme majors were mostly green ; Doge +3%, Shiba +2%, PEPE +2%, TRUMP +1%, Bonk +1%, Pengu +8%, SPX +5%, WIF -1% and Fartcoin +8% PIPPIN jumped 56% to $480M mc; PENGUIN +28% to $100M, USOR (+31%) and WAR (+44%) were other notable movers 💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker Moonbirds shared the tokenomics for the BIRB token launching today, including a 2-year staking program Crypto payments startup Mesh reached a $1 billion unicorn valuation after raising $75 million in a Series C led by Dragonfly Tenbin raised $7.1M from Galaxy and others to introduce a new yield-bearing tokenization model for commodities and FX 🚚 What is happening in NFTs? NFT leaders were mostly red ; Punks -1% at 28.4 ETH, Pudgy -5% at 4.46 ETH, and BAYC -2% at 5.9 ETH; Hypurr -7% at 542 HYPE Del Mundos (+17%) led top movers again; Moonbirds fell 40% after tokenomics released Forgotten Runiverse went offline after its developers paused the Ethereum- Daily Debrief Newsletter Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more. Your Email Get it! Get it!