Hyperliquid (HYPE) Review: Why I Think It Is Overvalued

My view on Hyperliquid and its token HYPE is that it is overvalued, not truly decentralized, and a poor place to put money. I don't own any, and across the posts below I explain why I would not buy it at the prices I have seen. I'm an ICP holder, and I say so openly, so weigh my bias as you read.

If you are asking whether Hyperliquid is a good investment, my short answer is no. The longer answer comes from four pieces I made between June 14 and August 21, 2026. Each one comes at the same project from a different angle, and together they show how my concerns grew from a valuation complaint into a wider case against the project. This is not financial advice. It is the research I did and the conclusions I reached.

The earliest is HYPE Is the Most Dangerous Altcoin in the Top 20, from June 14. A viewer had told me HYPE beat ICP that year, and my answer was that recent price action is not a reason to buy. The real problem, I argued, was the valuation. I put ICP's fully diluted value at about $1.2 billion and HYPE's outstanding token value near $33 billion, roughly ten times larger, for a project I do not consider decentralized. I said it was overvalued by at least 10x, and maybe 100x.

On June 17 I went deeper in two pieces. In Dear Hyperliquid Holders: My Honest Crypto Concerns I raised the points I could check myself. The project's website names no team members and shows no faces or YouTube channel, its front end is not hosted on-chain, and the source code is closed. I also said I was biased: I hold at least 10,000 ICP, and that is worth saying before anyone takes my word on a rival. From 11 years in crypto, I think a new project already worth billions, with large unlocks ahead, is close to a guaranteed way to lose money. I pointed to Mantra, which I had called to zero and which went to zero within about two months of that video.

The same day, Why My Realistic Hyperliquid Price Prediction Is $0 explained why I would not hold it at any price I could see. My rule is to invest only in what I use every day. I use Internet Computer every day, through OpenChat, and I do not use Hyperliquid. I also questioned the team copy and the claims on the project's site, calling its description of itself as a cutting-edge blockchain a misrepresentation. I asked where the transactions behind its volume are shown, and I suspected fake volume because I could not find an answer. I also noted that I cannot use the exchange from the United States, which to me points to a website that is centrally controlled.

My view hardened on August 21, 2026, when Hyperliquid hit an all-time high and I posted Hyperliquid Just Hit an All-Time High. I'd Take Profits Now. I argued that a tradable market cap of about $17 billion sat alongside roughly $43 billion more tokens headed to insiders and the foundation, so the peak was the price those holders would most want to sell into. I also said ICP's Multidex, a fully on-chain exchange in testing, is open source and can be forked, which means a rival could be built cheaply. My conclusion was blunt: if I held HYPE, I would take profits and sell.

Read the posts below with the numbers in mind. The figures differ from post to post because they came from different sources and dates, and some claims in the June posts are things Grok told me, which I pass along for you to verify. Check current numbers yourself before you act on any of it. For the method I use to check a coin, see how to research a crypto before you buy, and for why I hold ICP, see the ICP hub.

If you are holding HYPE and want my view on your own position, you can get a personal video review at https://jerrybanfield.com/review/.

Hyperliquid Just Hit an All-Time High. I’d Take Profits Now.

From my video published August 21, 2026.

Hyperliquid just hit an all-time high, and if I were holding any of it, now would be the perfect time to take profits. This is not financial advice, because I don't have any Hyperliquid. But if I did have some, say a family member had some and passed away and I managed to get hold of it, I would sell all of it right now. Look at the price chart. This is where crypto retail gets wrecked. In my view, this is the worst time ever in history to buy Hyperliquid. There are several key things I'm going to cover here that are huge liabilities for Hyperliquid going forward, things that could cause the price, at a minimum, never to be this high again. Even if it goes up, it only has a little bit more room to possibly go up, whereas there's a ton of room to lose money from here. Easily, you could be looking at 90-plus percent losses in this token over the next few years.

Problem One: The Outstanding Token Value Is Ridiculous

The first huge problem is that the outstanding token value has gotten ridiculous. Right now, the tradable market cap is $17 billion. But there are $43 billion more in tokens that exist, unlocking and going to insiders and to the Hyperliquid Foundation. If I were them, I'd want to do anything it takes to get the price chart to pump like this, because if I had tokens unlocking, this is exactly the price I'd want to dump back into. So this is valued at $77 billion fully diluted, which is insane for a single exchange product that says it's decentralized but really isn't. The marketing is inaccurate.

It's valued right now at just a little below Solana, which is a huge problem, because Solana has been around for years with massive branding. It's been everywhere. And yet the fully diluted valuation for Hyperliquid is higher than Solana's right now, which is absolutely insane. This is something a basic investor can easily comprehend: how bad this number is. It can only go up so much more without the token dumpage having to be sold into the price to keep the flywheel marketing going. That's the first huge problem, and to me the outstanding token value is a total deal breaker.

Even some of the very best projects with the best technology, like Internet Computer, which has by far the best technology in crypto, saw their initial token unlocks contribute to dumping the price. You had investors who couldn't sell, then it unlocked over a period of years, and there was constant dumping whenever the unlocks came. Hyperliquid has the same problem, except way worse, on way bigger amounts of money, on a way smaller use case.

Problem Two: It's Closed Source and Not Really Decentralized

The second problem we need to address with Hyperliquid is that when you look at the actual documentation, it is closed source. There are some parts that are on-chain, but the website is not hosted on-chain, which means they can do anything they want in the front end of the website. And the source code is not available to the public, so you just have to trust them as to how orders and everything else are executed on the back end. For something marketing itself as a decentralized exchange product, the way I see it, it's mostly operating like a centralized exchange. That means it's competing with other centralized exchanges like Binance and Coinbase.

It also means that when users realize this is not truly decentralized, that they can ban entire countries from using it, like how the United States currently cannot use Hyperliquid, which prevents a whole lot of people from using it, other solutions have the chance to fill that void. A lot of the people trading on it don't realize this. They think it's so decentralized because you don't have to KYC right away. But they can lock your account, suspend your account, freeze your funds, and do anything they want with almost no transparency as to how it's being done, because it's closed source. That is a fatal flaw that could easily be pointed out by competitors, marketed against, and end up crushing the hype around the Hyperliquid token.

Problem Three: A Real On-Chain Exchange Already Exists

The third thing, which almost nobody sees coming, is that the technology exists to build a real, fully on-chain decentralized exchange. The Internet Computer Protocol has built an exchange right now called Multidex that is in the testing phase and is actually fully on-chain. If you compare Multidex to Hyperliquid: Hyperliquid is fast, but it runs on what amounts to a dedicated, purpose-built cluster that's entirely closed source. So when the whole value in theory is that it's decentralized, no outside company can see the code. The traders have to have full faith in the operator. You can't verify matching rules, fees, or whether the house quietly rips you off. Meanwhile, Multidex runs on a real general-purpose network, the Internet Computer, and is open source. Anyone can read it, verify it, fork it, or propose changes to it. That means there is a vastly superior competitor just about to launch.

Here's what's even crazier. Did you catch that? Anyone can verify it or fork it. That means the Internet Computer Protocol has infrastructure where anyone can make their own version of Hyperliquid for very cheap, if not nearly free, by forking it. Let's say someone has $10 million they want to turn into $100 million. Do you think they'd put it into Hyperliquid and trade on there? Or would they rather make their own version of Hyperliquid, pay people to market it, set up the tokenomics with their own new token, and just print money from it? That infrastructure exists right now on ICP, and you can see the test version in action.

It's set up on the Network Nervous System, which means you can't just ban an entire country from using it. It's truly decentralized, and all the code is public and open source, which means someone can't just stop you from trading on it because you pissed them off or got on the wrong person's watch list or bad side. So there's something vastly superior to Hyperliquid, and almost anyone can build it now with AI. Almost anyone can use Claude or Codex to go build their own version of Hyperliquid fully on-chain on ICP, and then put their own money into printing money all for themselves.

The Window Is Closing

So while Hyperliquid hit this brief window where it met a need and a market and got a lot of marketing and hype, the window is closing. The next wave of truly decentralized exchanges built fully by AI is coming, and almost everybody has every incentive to push people into their own environment and market their own exchange instead of Hyperliquid. To me, this is the perfect storm of events for Hyperliquid. When you put it all together, the absolutely horrible token unlocks, the fact that the meaningful parts of it are not actually decentralized, and the fact that competitors offering true decentralization are spinning up right now and are easy to recreate with AI, this indicates to me the perfect time to sell. Right here.

Again, this isn't financial advice, and I'm not a financial advisor. I'm all in on ICP because of the infrastructure, and I'm out here hoping every day that I can help some of you do better with crypto: make more money, waste less time, and lose less money. If you've enjoyed this, I'm available at jerrybanfield.com and you can chat with me. If you've got a coin you want to talk about, I have sponsored crypto videos available. If you want to talk about a coin and tell me about something, we can record a video and I can put it on the Crypto Reviews channel.

If you'd like to chat crypto, you can go to jerrybanfield.com, pay with crypto or with a card, and join my chat for lifetime access. You can also talk with me whenever I'm online. One guy yesterday who trades a lot of crypto bought the lifetime chat, and then, since I was online, he paid for a 10-minute call. He was having a great time talking to me, so he paid for another hour of calls after that, and I'm super grateful. He's number one on my leaderboard with $327 in yesterday, and we had a great time talking about crypto and all the different things he's seeing and I'm seeing. I'm here anytime.

If you want to comment and share what you think with me, the Jerry Banfield chat is the place to do it, because I don't read comments. Thanks for reading, find more of my coin breakdowns in my Crypto Reviews playlist, and I look forward to seeing you on jerrybanfield.com.

Dear Hyperliquid Holders: My Honest Crypto Concerns

From my video published June 17, 2026.

Dear Hyperliquid holders, this is one to read all the way through, because I genuinely care about your success as a crypto investor. I want you to be wealthy and have an abundant life like I do. I've been in crypto at least 11 years, having bought my first Bitcoin in 2014, and I've researched thousands and thousands of altcoins. I'm a full-time YouTuber and Twitch streamer, and one of my viewers, Kung Fu Classics, asked me whether I'd reviewed Hyperliquid. I didn't have a Hyperliquid video up yet, so I took a look at it, and I have some serious concerns that are very obvious to me.

Before I go further: this is not financial advice. I'm not a financial advisor, and I'm not telling you to do anything. This is simply my research, presented for your benefit because I care about you. I also need to be upfront about my own bias. I hold at least 10,000 ICP, which is fifty-plus thousand dollars worth of Internet Computer Protocol at today's prices, and that is clearly going to color what I have to say. With that out of the way, let's dive into the things I see that, as a holder, I believe you should be aware of.

I want to be clear that I'm very aware of all the criticisms of Internet Computer Protocol too, every potential problem. I've even brought new concerns to the ICP community myself, and I made a video addressed to the founder to talk about some of the things that worry me. So I know the downsides of ICP intimately. Everything could go wrong; not everything is working perfectly. That's exactly the point: with every crypto you're holding, I think you should know the criticisms as well as the hype. If you only know one side, you can't get a real picture of what you actually own.

A brand-new project already worth billions

The first huge problem I see with Hyperliquid is that it's a new project, and it's a new project that's already worth billions of dollars. From what I've seen in 11 years in crypto, that is a nearly guaranteed formula to lose money. Again, not financial advice; anything can happen, and we're creating this reality together in real time. But brand-new projects are often unproven.

Look at Mantra. I called that one back when I was doing my "going to zero" videos. I try to make these more respectful now, but at the time I said Mantra was going to zero, and it went to zero within two months of my video about it. It was a multi-billion dollar market cap project, and it dropped something like 90% in a very short amount of time. I have the same concern for Hyperliquid, because right now it's around a $6 billion market cap, and that's just what's actually trading. There's $17 billion total fully diluted, which means massive token unlocks and massive dumpage ahead. In my experience, that's an absolute recipe for disaster. Will it play out that way? I don't know. But I certainly wouldn't want to invest in something like that.

That's a big part of why I'm in Internet Computer Protocol. ICP's fully diluted market cap is something like six or seven times smaller, the technology is, in my opinion, the best in crypto, and we've already been through almost all of the token unlocks and dumpage that started four years ago when it launched. What I've learned from being in Internet Computer is that you do not want to get into something until the token dumpage has already happened, and at that point you do want to verify that the team is actually still working on it.

Where are the people?

When I go look at the Hyper Foundation website, here's what concerns me. I'm not going to walk you through it screen by screen, because you should be doing your own research rather than just taking my word for anything. You should be looking all of this up yourself. That's exactly how I came to believe Internet Computer Protocol is the best tech in crypto. I found that a lot of YouTubers, including ones I trusted and had watched for a long time, were giving inaccurate information about it. When I double-checked what they said, I found they were wrong. So you should always double-check everyone you watch when it comes to crypto, and you do that by looking at the websites themselves. I'm giving you advice on how to do your own research.

So when I look at the Hyper Foundation website, what I don't see is a team of people working on this. Many of you investing in crypto don't expect to see a team, but ultimately, when you invest in crypto, the bottom line is that you are investing in something that real people are building. Think about companies: the real value of investing in a company is the people who know how to use the technology, the CEO who knows how to run things, and all the workers who know how to build with it. For me, trust gets built when I see people's faces, their names, their X profiles, their LinkedIn profiles, even though I don't personally use LinkedIn. When I see YouTube videos of people talking about and actually using the technology, that builds trust.

I don't see that on Hyperliquid. On hyperfoundation.org, at least, I don't see any of that. I don't see a YouTube channel. I don't see a single person's name on the website. To me, that is not trustworthy. And I'm saying this to the team as well: if you can add these things, please do. Some teams have made changes after I've raised these points. This is constructive feedback. I would love to see the team put their faces, their names, and their profiles out there, and bring as many of you as possible into the open, because that would tell me they believe in their product, they're using it, and they're developing it.

The reason people don't want to put their names on products is that when those products go to zero, they don't want you to sue them, be upset with them, track them down, or send them nasty messages, which you should not do. Lawsuits are a whole other area I know nothing about, but you don't gain anything from harassing people. Still, that's why people keep themselves secret. I don't operate like that. I put my name and my face out because I believe in what I'm saying, and I'm out here making six YouTube videos a day because I believe in what I'm saying and I care about you as my viewer first and foremost. When I look at Hyperliquid, I'm not seeing that same kind of energy. I'm seeing them try to convince you through numbers and stats, and what I'm not seeing is clear proof that this is special.

Claims that don't match what I know

What they say on their website does not match what I know from things like Internet Computer Protocol. If you scroll to the top, it says, "for the first time, build projects, create value, and exchange assets on the same hyper-performance chain." To me, that's inaccurate. Internet Computer has been doing exactly that for four years; it came out in May, so just under four years now. ICP has been giving you a place to build projects, create value, and exchange assets all on the same chain for years.

The site also says it's "the blockchain to house all finance," and that second sentence seems blatantly inaccurate to me, because Internet Computer Protocol is the only technology on earth where you can build the website, the coins, a truly decentralized exchange, tokens, and DAOs all on-chain, directly accessible through a browser, eliminating the need for middlemen. Hyperliquid is making that same kind of claim on its front page as if it's new. It's not new; it's been done for years. So either they don't know about Internet Computer Protocol, in which case I don't have much trust in a project that isn't aware of it, or they do know about it and they're betting that you don't.

Then it says the flagship application is "the premier decentralized exchange." From what I can see, I don't believe it's actually decentralized, because the website itself isn't on-chain. If you're interacting with a website that is not on-chain, that's not decentralized; it's moderating, sitting between you and the blockchain. In that case there can't be any real decentralization in the user interface, and the user interface is, I'd argue, the most important part of the whole equation. The Hyperliquid tech stack, from what I can see, doesn't impress me, especially compared to ICP.

What the research turns up

I use Grok to research cryptos. If you want to look up the criticisms of any coin you're holding, just go to Grok and ask it for the criticisms; it does a good job laying them out. On some coins it has limited data, but Grok absolutely tore into Hyperliquid on a level I haven't seen before. Maybe I should run ICP through it too. Grok tears Hyperliquid apart from just about every angle.

Grok flags centralization concerns. It says there's a very limited validator set, only 16 validators, and that the Hyperliquid team holds a super-majority of the stake, so they could basically do anything to the chain. That would be logical for a project this early, but combined with what I said about the website, it's a real concern. To be clear, this next part is what Grok gave me as part of its research, on top of my own observations: Grok says the code is closed source, that there's a centralized API and poor documentation, that the validator rewards are insufficient to cover bonding requirements, and that there's a super-majority controlled by the foundation. That doesn't seem very decentralized, does it?

There are also posts indicating that whistleblowers are saying Hyperliquid engages in pay-to-play practices, favoring well-connected insiders who can corner the supply of HYPE tokens used to validate transactions. That reportedly lets wealthy investors gain disproportionate influence over the network, and the token supply appears to be very centralized, which again makes sense for an early project but isn't reassuring.

Then there's a whole big section on security and vulnerability risks. The most obvious one is a lack of battle testing, and that's exactly why I don't invest in new projects: the project simply hasn't been battle tested. Hyperliquid hasn't proven its resilience, at least from what we can see, against huge market crashes, cyberattacks, or exploits that could take it to zero. We saw how easily that happened with Mantra. Grok also talks about past exploits, people pointing out validator software risk, potential North Korean hacker concerns, and insufficient developer activity.

Getting developers to build is very difficult, especially once developers find Internet Computer Protocol, which I believe is the best technology anywhere to build with in crypto. ICP is onboarding more new developers per market cap than anything else from what I can see. I didn't even find Hyperliquid listed in Electric Capital's developer report, because it wasn't around for all of 2024, and I don't see any evidence of fantastic developer activity happening here, according to Grok or otherwise.

People are saying that the underlying activity is insufficient to justify its market capitalization, especially when there's an apparent scarcity of developers and the project is closed source, so there's only so much you can even do with it anyway. According to Grok, which you can ask yourself, the hype was distributed in a massive airdrop in November 2024, and the promises of governance and rewards have not been fulfilled. That could set up a prisoner's dilemma where the wealthy holders dump and take it to zero, which is exactly what appears to have happened with Mantra, a project that had a lot in common with Hyperliquid. From what I can tell, this airdrop was a big key to its growth, and it looks like the price action is mostly speculation rather than organic adoption. That's true of almost everything in crypto.

I want to be upfront about my approach here. I'm not screenshotting and showing all of this material anymore. If you want to read it for yourself, I'd encourage you to ask Grok directly after you finish this post. I'm sharing what I found, but you should verify all of it on your own.

The Fees, the Tech, and Why I Keep Comparing It to ICP

Grok also points to the fully diluted valuation problem, and it notes there are relatively high trading fees on Hyperliquid. In my experience, that's not good. For comparison, you can swap with hardly any fees, instantaneously and fully on chain, on ICP. All of that technology was set up years ago, and it's working better than ever today. When I look at the two side by side, the contrast in fees and on-chain capability is one of the things that stands out most to me.

Regulatory Exposure and KYC

There are more problems beyond the fees. Right now, Hyperliquid has a lack of KYC, which is great for certain people who'd like to avoid it. But that's the kind of thing that's likely to get attacked. Hyperliquid has set itself up as a big target with this billion-plus-dollar market cap, the sort of target that draws attention from OFAC, the Office of Foreign Assets Control in the US, and from the Securities and Exchange Commission. From what I see, this is something that could easily come under attack, or it could start requiring KYC and then go to zero from there.

User Retention and Team Conduct

Then there are the user retention challenges. The data suggests that only a minority of users, somewhere around 20% of the top users, actually remain active after six months. This is a broader issue across the whole crypto space, but that's why you have to ask yourself why this project is going to be any different than the rest.

There continue to be more and more concerns the deeper I look. Grok says there has been unprofessional conduct from the team, and to me that's a bad sign. When someone posts a video or an analysis like this, and the response is unprofessional, with name calling and labeling people in the most severe terms, that's a problem. We'll see whether the team responds to this. To be fair, the team has responded to some of these criticisms, saying that no single entity can dominate decision making and that they'll make the code public.

Where I Land as an Investor

Based on everything I've seen here, there's no way I would want to buy this or hold it as an investor. I want to be clear that this isn't financial advice. This is simply the research I've done, because so many of you asked me to look into it, and this is what I've come to believe based on what I found. You can look all of it up yourself, and I'd encourage you to do exactly that before making any decision.

I appreciate you reading this all the way through. I filmed this live, and I genuinely care about you as a crypto investor, which is why I try to keep a more respectful tone in everything I share. I cover all kinds of subjects, from gaming to music to crypto reviews to meditations, and if this kind of breakdown is helpful to you, you can find much more of it in my Crypto Reviews playlist. My hope is always that this work entertains you and makes your life a little better.

Why My Realistic Hyperliquid Price Prediction Is $0

From my video published June 17, 2026.

Why I think a realistic price prediction for Hyperliquid is zero

In my opinion, a realistic crypto price prediction for Hyperliquid is zero. To me this is an extremely high risk, extremely low reward, dangerous project, and I'm going to give you an honest crypto review because I care about your success. As a crypto investor, I don't want you to get ripped off and waste your time on a coin that, from my experience being in crypto since 2014 and researching thousands of altcoins, looks absolutely horrible. You can verify everything I'm saying in five or ten minutes by doing your own research. I don't enjoy being the one to tell you this, because I'd get paid much better if I just hyped cryptos up and told you how great they are. But I care about you, so here is how I see it.

When you start with the supply on CoinMarketCap, this is a fully diluted market cap of roughly $26 billion. To me that means insiders hold a massive amount of tokens they can dump on you. In my experience, they do this not just to make huge amounts of money, but to get themselves listed higher in the rankings, up toward number 20. Yet I see almost no substance, nothing of value in this project at all. It launched just a couple of months ago, and I hate investing in new projects, which is exactly why I would never invest in this. Just on what I've already told you, I would never put money here, and there's so much more.

My rule: only invest in what you use every day

I've come to believe you never want to invest in new projects unless you are using them every single day yourself. I apply this rule across all of crypto. Unless I'm using a blockchain every day, and an app on that blockchain every day, I have no interest in it. Out of the thousands of blockchains out there, there's only one I use every day, and that's Internet Computer Protocol. I use OpenChat on it, which is fully on chain, and that's where you can actually talk to me. So I only personally invest in things I use every day. To me, if you're not using Hyperliquid every day, it would be insane to invest in it. And even if you were using it every day, it still looks like a terrible investment to me because the market cap is just too big.

For comparison, in my view Internet Computer has the best tech in crypto by far, and nobody else is even years close to catching up. Yet the fully diluted valuation of Internet Computer Protocol is less than a fifth of what Hyperliquid is right now, maybe even a sixth or a seventh, and it's less than the circulating supply. So just based on what I've told you, this looks horrible to me, and from there it only gets worse.

The marketing copy that doesn't add up

If you scroll down and read more of "what is Hyperliquid," the very first sentence, in my opinion, is a lie. It claims Hyperliquid represents a cutting-edge blockchain platform. I don't believe it does. To me the only truly cutting-edge blockchain platform is Internet Computer. It's the only blockchain I know of that can do huge amounts of computation fully on chain, which matters for security and verifiability, and it's the only blockchain you can run AI on. It's a real-world computer, and it's millions of times more energy efficient than Bitcoin. That, to me, is a cutting-edge blockchain. Hyperliquid just came out. ICP came out three and a half years ago, and Hyperliquid can't do a fraction of what ICP does. So I see a blatant, in-your-face misrepresentation in the first half of the first sentence. In the opinion of anyone who understands what I consider the truly most advanced tech in crypto, no one would call this a cutting-edge blockchain platform. To me it's a copy and paste. I believe they made some small changes to what everybody else was already doing, then exaggerated about it, set up the tokenomics in their favor, and convinced people to buy something I see as worthless. That's how I see it.

I could be more moderate, but being moderate online means letting all these people who say something is going to 100x set the tone. So I feel I need to be as negative as I honestly can. Watch one of their videos and one of mine, and you'll have a balanced look at things. So in my view Hyperliquid is not at all a cutting-edge blockchain platform. ICP does enhance the efficiency and performance of DeFi applications. Hyperliquid, in my opinion, is the same old crap as the rest of crypto. I don't see it as a novel layer one engineered from the ground up. It looks very similar to what's already out there.

An "impressive background" tells me nothing

Here's the next question you should ask after you read that the development team is composed of individuals with impressive backgrounds. Did you know I've got an impressive background too? I can freestyle rap, I've been a professional gamer, and I've been a top 10 Udemy instructor. See how vague that is? The copy goes on, including alumni from prestigious institutions such as Harvard, Caltech, and MIT, and professionals with experience at notable companies. To me this sounds completely fake. There are blockchains that genuinely have that. If you go to dfinity.org, the major contributor to the Internet Computer, you'll find the faces of people with really impressive backgrounds. But when you go to the Hyper Foundation website, which is the official website linked right there, where are these people?

To me this feels blatantly fraudulent. I picture a couple of guys laughing as they write this, generating it with AI. Like asking ChatGPT to write a description for Hyperliquid, and when it asks what to say about the development team, the answer is just "I don't know, say they have impressive backgrounds from top schools." That's how it reads to me, and I think you shouldn't accept it. You should demand better than this from your crypto investments. The website looks sloppy, with a 2024 copyright on it, and not one person is listed on the Hyper Foundation website. Not one person's name. And I believe I know why people don't put their names on something like this: because they know what they're doing. From getting deep enough in crypto to be somewhat on the inside, my belief is that the people on the inside know the masses are being misled, and many of them laugh at how little the public knows. To me this looks like a team that's comfortable launching something with not a single team member named anywhere on the website.

More warning signs I can't ignore

Another warning sign: I'm in the US and I can't use it in the US. For something marketed as a great decentralized exchange, that stopped me from using it. How does it do that? Because, in my view, the website is hosted on centralized tech and can easily detect exactly what location I'm in, since I'm not using a VPN, just connecting raw. To me that's another signal among many.

Some of you will say, "Jerry, what about the trading volume?" It claims it can do 200,000 transactions per second. But is there anywhere that actually shows you the transactions being executed? Do you realize how easy it is for exchanges to fake volume? They put up a sell order, they put up a buy order, and they sit there trading with themselves, posting fake volume. In my experience, 99 times out of 100 that's what's happening. I believe they crank out a ton of fake volume and fake transactions with their own money and their own tokens, and pay people to add more tokens and swap all of it, so it looks like something is happening. Yet I've never seen anyone, anywhere in crypto, say they've actually used this.

What's telling, too, is the risk page. The documentation here is pretty sparse, and I don't even see a developer forum. The risk page admits it runs its own layer one which has not undergone extensive testing and scrutiny. To me that reads like, "we just barely built this over the weekend and hardly know what we're doing." On top of that you have to use Arbitrum to bridge assets over, so if something goes wrong on Ethereum or Arbitrum, that could hurt you even if Hyperliquid itself doesn't. Then there's market liquidity, with a potential risk of low liquidity because, in my view, no one's really using it. And oracles: ICP can run its own oracles, but this so-called decentralized exchange has to rely on oracles from other services to pull data, which is one more thing that could go wrong.

So to me this absolutely fails the test. If you want more of how I think through coins like this, you can dig into my Crypto Reviews playlist. None of this is financial advice; it's simply how I see the project and how I make my own decisions. My honest take is to be extremely skeptical of Hyperliquid and to focus instead on the tech and the apps you actually use every day.

HYPE Is the Most Dangerous Altcoin in the Top 20

From my video published June 14, 2026.

Hyperliquid is, in my opinion, one of the riskiest and most dangerous cryptos in the top 20. I reviewed it recently and a viewer fired back: "Give it up, ICP is done — HYPE was a better investment than ICP this year." That comment is a perfect example of the short-term, what-pumped-lately thinking that gets people wrecked. This is my opinion, not financial advice, and I'm an ICP maxi.

Short-term winner is not the same as good investment

Is it true that HYPE outperformed ICP over the last several months? Sure. If you'd bought both at the start of the year, HYPE would be ahead today. But "what went up recently" is not a sound basis for investing. That's the trading mindset — buy ICP at three, sell at four, rebuy at two — and it keeps you anxious and reactive instead of owning something real. Whose price pumped this quarter tells you almost nothing about where value actually is.

Even supporters admit it's not decentralized

Here's the line that ends the debate for me. The commenter criticizing me wrote "even though HYPE is not decentralized" — and then kept going. Stop right there. The whole pitch for Hyperliquid is that it's a decentralized exchange, yet even its defenders concede it isn't. It's a centralized trading platform with some blockchain features bolted on and "decentralized" stamped across the marketing. Once you accept that, there's nothing to go past.

The valuation is absurd

Now look at the numbers. ICP, with every token unlocked, carries a fully diluted value around $1.2 billion. Hyperliquid is sitting near $33 billion in outstanding token value — roughly ten times ICP — for something that isn't actually decentralized, with enormous unlocks still ahead. To me that's overvalued by at least 10x, maybe 100x. I expect the vast majority of people holding it at these levels to get badly hurt. You can check how that prediction ages.

Where you invest is a moral choice

The part nobody wants to hear: where you put your money matters morally. The standard defense is "but the price is up." So what? Mindlessly dumping cash into something just because influencers — many of them paid — are hyping it, with no research and no care for how the profits are made, is exactly what creates the profit-over-people world people love to complain about. Hyperliquid is a textbook case. Nobody buying it seems to care that it isn't decentralized. Countries care. I care. Tens of thousands of us in the ICP community care.

Value-based investing is just calmer

There's a practical payoff to caring about fundamentals: peace. Even if HYPE had been a winner for you, holding it means riding an emotional roller coaster — checking every day, asking "do I sell now?", because deep down you know the fundamentals aren't there. Value-based, long-term investing in something you actually believe in is a relaxed, unstressed return instead of a daily gamble.

If I held HYPE today, I'd take profits now — not financial advice. It's the same lens as why market caps are a distraction: appraise what's really there. For more breakdowns, watch my Crypto Reviews playlist here.