126x

Arthur Hayes, the BitMEX co-founder who now runs crypto venture fund Maelstrom, sold his personal stash of Hyperliquid’s HYPE tokens just weeks after predicting the asset could rally 126-fold.

Ferrari jokes and blockchain receipts

Blockchain analytics service Lookonchain reported on Sunday that Hayes unloaded 96,628 HYPE — worth about $5.1 million — booking a profit of roughly $823,000, or 19%, in a month.

Not long after, Hayes confirmed the move with his trademark irreverence, posting on X: “Need to pay my deposit on the new Rari 849 Testarossa.” The comment fueled backlash from traders who accused him of pumping HYPE in August before quickly exiting.

Hayes pushed back on Monday, insisting the sale was tied to concerns laid out by his firm. “This is why we dumped $HYPE today. But don’t worry 126x is still possible 2028 is a long way off,” he wrote.

Maelstrom warns of $11.9B supply unlocks

Earlier today, Maelstrom published a lengthy X post outlining what it called HYPE’s “first true test.”

Starting Nov. 29, 237.8 million HYPE will begin vesting linearly over two years — unlocking nearly $500 million of tokens per month. At current prices of around $50, that represents $11.9 billion of supply entering circulation.

The post estimated Hyperliquid’s buyback program could only absorb about 17% of that flow, leaving a potential $410 million monthly overhang. “Has the market priced in the sheer scale of these unlocks?” Maelstrom asked.

Maelstrom framed the looming supply shock as natural for a fast-growing protocol but warned that large vested allocations may tempt early developers and insiders to sell. The firm also noted that even large decentralized autonomous treasury (DAT) deals, such as Sonnet’s $583 million HYPE raise, won’t offset the scale of the unlocks.

Still betting on a decentralized Binance

The remarks contrasted sharply with Hayes’s Aug. 27 blog post, where he called Hyperliquid a “decentralized Binance” and argued HYPE could climb 126x by 2028. That thesis relied on bold assumptions: a $10 trillion stablecoin market, Hyperliquid capturing a Binance-level trading share, and fee structures holding steady.

Despite selling his tokens, Hayes reiterated that long-term view on Monday, describing the upcoming unlock as a hurdle, not a death blow. In his words, “2028 is a long way off.”

Hyperliquid has surged to become a dominant player in decentralized perpetual futures, and its HYPE token remains central to governance, staking and fee distribution. Whether the market can digest nearly $12 billion in new supply may determine if Hayes’s forecast proves prescient — or overly ambitious.

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Arthur Hayes, the BitMEX co-founder now serving as co-founder and chief investment officer of crypto-focused venture capital firm Maelstrom, says Hyperliquid’s HYPE token could soar more than 100-fold.

Hayes is best known for inventing the perpetual swap at BitMEX, the derivatives contract that changed crypto trading. At Maelstrom, he invests in early-stage infrastructure projects. In his latest blog post, Hayes argued Hyperliquid’s token could rise 126 times, a claim backed by a valuation model produced by Maelstrom.

Hyperliquid is a decentralized exchange built on its own blockchain. Unlike Coinbase or Binance, which are companies running private servers, Hyperliquid lives fully on-chain. Traders use it mainly for perpetual futures — contracts that let them bet on crypto prices without an expiry date.

Its native token, HYPE, acts as both a governance tool and an economic stake. Holders can vote on upgrades, stake tokens for rewards and benefit from the way trading fees link to the token’s value. In short, Hyperliquid is the venue and HYPE is how users share in its growth.

‘Decentralized Binance’

Hayes begins his case with the big picture.

He says when governments print too much money, currencies lose value and ordinary savers are forced to speculate just to maintain their standard of living. Those who don’t already own houses or stocks see their savings eroded.

For many, especially in emerging markets, the easiest way to save today is with stablecoins such as USDT and USDC — digital dollars that sit natively on blockchains. Once you’re holding stablecoins, Hayes argues, the most obvious place to put them to work is crypto itself, since that’s the system where those tokens function most easily.

That funnel, according to the Maelstrom CIO, leads straight to Hyperliquid. Hayes says it already dominates decentralized perpetual futures trading, controlling around two-thirds of the market and is starting to grow against centralized giants like Binance.

He points to execution as the difference. He believes that Hyperliquid’s small team, led by founder Jeff Yan, ships features faster than rivals with hundreds of employees. The platform feels as fast as Binance, Hayes says, but every step — trading, settlement, collateral management — happens transparently on-chain.

He calls Hyperliquid a “decentralized Binance.” Like Binance, it relies on stablecoins instead of banks for deposits. Unlike Binance, everything is recorded on its blockchain. Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 upgrade also lets outside developers create entirely new markets that plug directly into its order book, turning it into a permissionless trading hub.

The 126x upside

Then comes the math. Maelstrom’s model starts with a bold forecast: by 2028, the total value of stablecoins could reach $10 trillion.

Next, Hayes borrows a ratio from Binance’s history. On that exchange, daily trading volume has often equaled about 26.4% of the total stablecoin supply. Apply that ratio to $10 trillion, and Hyperliquid could see about $2.6 trillion in trades every day.

Now add fees. Hyperliquid charges around 0.03% per trade. On $2.6 trillion in daily activity, that works out to roughly $258 billion in annual revenues once you roll it up across the year.

Investors then discount those future revenues into today’s money to reflect risk and the time value of money. Hayes uses a 5% rate, which produces a present value of about $5.16 trillion.

Finally, stack that against HYPE’s current fully diluted valuation of around $41 billion. Divide the two, and you get Hayes’s headline number: a potential 126x upside.

Maelstrom analysis shows how HYPE could see 126x upside.

He ties the calculation back to his broader thesis—that weak money forces people into stablecoins, and stablecoins push them into crypto speculation, with Hyperliquid as the rails for that activity and HYPE as the token that captures the economics.

‘The king is dead’

Hayes closes out his thesis with a bold prediction. “The King is dead. Long live the King,” he wrote, arguing Hyperliquid could surpass Binance as the world’s largest exchange and that Jeff Yan could one day rival CZ’s wealth.

The model depends on big assumptions: a $10 trillion stablecoin market, Hyperliquid holding a Binance-level share, fees holding at 0.03% and discount rates staying low. If those conditions break, so does the outcome.

But Hayes’s through-line is simple. If the world saves in stablecoins, the speculation that follows will happen on-chain — and in his view, Hyperliquid is already in the lead.