In short
- Real-world assets (RWAs)—tokenized versions of traditional economic instruments like company stocks, crude oil, and market indices traded as blockchain contracts—accounted for 54% of Hyperliquid’s weekly trading volume from July 13-19, the first time non-crypto assets have dominated the exchange.
- ARK Invest head of digital research Lorenzo Valente said Hyperliquid’s $26 billion in RWA trading last week surpassed the all-time high for crypto on any exchange in the world.
- South Korean chip maker SK Hynix—a direct competitor to Samsung in the field of AI memory—made a big splash in the Hyperliquid third-party market platform.
For the first time, traders on Hyperliquid moved more money through stocks and commodities than crypto. Lorenzo Valente, director of digital assets research at ARK Invest, announced the event Thursday at X: “We are entering a new era DeFi.” Hyperliquid, he said, for the first time made more trades from so-called real assets, or RWAs, than crypto in a single week.
RWAs – meaning the tokenized version of traditional financial instruments such as company shares, oil, or the S&P 500, turned into blockchain contracts that allow traders to buy and sell during the day and time – totaled $25.1 billion on July 13-19, or 52% of Hyperliquid and $48.2 billion of data per week used in billions. Valente put the most recent figure at $26 billion and 54%.
The prefixes and suffixes make this number very difficult. All permanent DEX last week’s industry average was $79 billion. Hyperliquid arranged $50 billion of it. The $26 billion in RWA transactions alone—only betting, oil contracts, gaming shows—was greater than the constant crypto volume of any exchange on the market.
How stocks ended up on crypto exchanges
The engine behind this is HIP-3, a Hyperliquid framework established in October 2025 that allows foreign groups to create their own perpetual markets—contracts that follow the price of assets without an expiration date, allowing traders to bet on the rise or fall of borrowed funds—using the existing Hyperliquid. Influence of builders 500,000 HYPE tokensit is currently worth 30 million dollars, to use this machine.
Since June, individual stocks have outperformed indices and commodities within the HIP-3, with individual stocks now making up 61% of all RWA trades. The HIP-3 platform it has held the pre-IPO markets of SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI. “RWAs accounted for 54% of the sales volume,” Valente said.
The main selling point is SK Hynix, a South Korean memory chipmaker that competes with Samsung in offering DRAM and high-end memory for AI systems.
ARK’s interest in Hyperliquid goes way back. In September 2025, CEO Cathie Wood told Master Investor podcast that the platform “reminds me of Solana in the early days,” adding that Solana has proven its value and earned its place with the biggest names in crypto. He called Hyperliquid “the new kid on the block,” and ARK hasn’t proved anything since.
Now one of ARK’s experts is raising a serious question for the entire industry. “I have no doubt that the RWA business will merge in the same place as crypto,” Valente wrote, predicting that dedicated leaders of the group may emerge from within the RWA—and that the platform operating on Bitcoin and Ethereum may prove “less important than many people think.”
Traders remained focused on crypto tokens, he added, “looking at the wrong market.”
Daily Debrief A letter
Start each day with top stories right here, including originals, podcasts, videos and more.
