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Macro finally reminded crypto that it still matters.
The Fed cut the expected 25 bps rate but signaled a more hawkish path ahead, hinting at one cut for next year. This was enough to knock BTC off its initial strength and reinforce the idea that the currency is not opening as quickly as many expected.
At the same time, Perp Wars is burning like an Aster and Lighter chip away from Hyperliquid’s control, and the gap between the cryptocurrency movement and its trading infrastructure is becoming too big to ignore.
Signs
Markets were pretty split yesterday between BTC and the major benchmarks. BTC closed at -0.73% while gold, S&P 500, and Nasdaq finished at 0.57%, 0.53%, and 0.22%, respectively.
The move followed the Fed’s much-anticipated 25-basis-point rate cut. What surprised the markets was the guidance that followed.
The Fed has signaled that rates will remain tight for a long time, with only one cut next year. Seniors to point to a cooling labor market, inflation still above target, and growth expected to remain strong. The message was clear that the money market is not opening as quickly as many expected; This tone explains why BTC regained its original strength.
Across all crypto sectors, performance was mixed. L2s and Memes were able to post gains of 1.70% and 1.27% respectively. The strength of L2 came almost entirely from MNT, which jumped 4.5% and now makes up almost a third of the index. The meme sector told a similar story, with M (MemeCore) up 6.2% while many other meme names traded lower.
AI and DePIN were lagging behind, at -3% and -4%. AI was weighed down by IP and ICP, which fell -6% and -7.9%, while the weakness of DePIN came from FIL and HNT at -4.9% and -5.6%.
BTC is hovering around $90,000, and the market remains neutral. Until the macro chooses a destination, the crypto continues to flow with it.
Market Update: HYPE in the upcoming Perp Wars
Is the HYPE going away? This has been a question on everyone’s mind as the brand struggles to support recovery. In the last seven days, HYPE is down -20% while BTC is down -3%. If we look outside and look at the weekly retracement of HYPE/BTC, it is clear that HYPE has retraced almost half of its performance since April’s low after reaching mid-September.
So what changed? The obvious answer is increased competition. The increased functionality matched well with the launch of Aster, which quickly captured market share and interest in Hyperliquid. Since mid-September, Hyperliquid’s perp share has dropped from 49% to 19% today. Most of those losses have gone to Aster and Lighter. In fact, Lighter has released a few Hyperliquids per week since mid-October.
But volume alone does not tell the whole story. When we compare the weekly volume in relation to the open interest, we see that Lighter and Aster post higher ratios than Hyperliquid. Larger numbers indicate an increase in the quality of land and often reflect activities dominated by agriculture. Aster and Lighter are both software drivers, so a large part of their functions can be changed if the stimulus freezes. Lighter has its own TGE it’s getting closer and this will give us the first reading that sticks and the amount of farm-and-run.
For a while, many thought that Hyperliquid would run away with Perp Wars. The picture now looks very competitive. I don’t think this will be the winning market, but the biggest exchange will be the one that offers the lowest fees, the deepest books, the largest selection of markets, and the most seamless marketing.
The lightweight is winning the pay war zero maker/taker fees, and last week we he realized how the rise of perp aggregators can lead to more travel to cheaper places. However depth and market selection is just as important and Hyperliquid still leads both – especially after the launch of HIP-3, which introduced endless markets that have seen initial attraction.
Recent storms like the team opens in November and concerns around Hyperliquid’s auto deleveraging design he was burdened with short-sightedness. Even so, the core principles remain strong. Hyperliquid regularly generates between $10 million-$20 million in weekly earnings that are used to fund HYPE. Very few protocols have the level of a real financial engine behind them.
Success is not guaranteed but whoever is writing Hyperliquid at the moment is probably in a hurry. The real battle for perp supremacy is just beginning, and the next few months will reveal who’s building solid boundaries and who’s just riding the wave of inspiration.
Repairing broken investor relations
Crypto has grown rapidly. What used to be just a fantasy game market has turned into a variety of ways to make money. Monthly transactions (excluding stablecoins) will reach $175 million in 2025, a 133% annual increase from $75 million in 2024.
The ability to connect around the world on a distributed network has led to unprecedented growth; Hyperliquid became the fastest company to ever reach $1 billion in ARR, Tether topped $500 billion in value, Axiom hit $63 million in monthly returns less than six months after launch.
If fundraising is any indication, with monthly raises ranging from $500 million to $2 billion, the industry continues to grow rapidly and strongly.
However, despite this growth, the industry has become more difficult to navigate than ever, especially for TradFi investors who want to diversify within the asset class. Although these assets have been based on ownership, they function as income generating businesses, their unique nature of crypto makes sustainability very difficult.
Take Pendle Finance, a flexible/flexible productivity exchange platform, for example. Interest-based companies generate $7.9 trillion in sales per day. Understanding the size of the TradFi market, investors are interested in how this extends to crypto. However, the nuances are thick:
- USDe Dominance (yields and rollover rates)
- The price is Ve (Vote-Escrow) tokenomics
- Aave integration (PT series) is a direct dependency
- Meta principles, the emergence of new protocols with motivational principles
This difficulty extends to almost any medicine that is rapidly evolving today. How do you explain the advantages of the CLOB model vs. GLP? How do you explain the relationship between Modular and Monolithic leasing? How sticky are the different types of user acquisition? Could this be the reason why many protocols are selling at lower prices compared to TradFi equivalents?
For professional allocators, the work process breaks down. Important information is locked behind multiple dashboards, GitHub pages, and private Telegram channels. This division creates three distinct barriers to entry:
- Division: There is no official source of effort. Data, docs, leadership and research are scattered across different platforms.
- Data reliability: Public aggregates are often inconsistent or mislabeled. Without consistent definitions, one bad placement can disrupt the entire financial concept.
- Translation: Many tools are written for crypto natives. They need to translate into the tools that finance committees need: cash, savings, social capital and cash flow.
To bridge this gap, Blockworks is launching IR speed in collaboration with the Solana Foundation. Designed to be a professional connection between providers and capital, this platform replaces the current distributed infrastructure with a gated, sustainable environment. It focuses on replacing open aggregators with the most reliable onchain metrics, turning governance events into IC-ready research, and centralizing traffic updates for direct communication between groups and distributors.
We start with Solana, because of its integration of many user services and the use of investment funds, but this role is a broad platform, which allows crypto projects to communicate effectively with shareholders and investors.
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