Arthur Hayes Puts $100K On Hyperliquid (HYPE) Outrunning Every $1B+ Altcoin

Arthur Hayes is turning a long-running debate about Hyperliquid into a price-denominated wager, staking $100,000 that HYPE will beat every altcoin with a $1 billion-plus market cap over a defined window. “Since HYPE is bad Kyle Samani let’s make a bet,” Hayes wrote on X. “I bet that from 00:00 UTC 10 Feb 2026 to 00:00 UTC 31 July 2026 $HYPE will out perform any shitcoin >$1bn mcap on coingecko in USD terms. You choose your champion. Loser donates $100k to a charity of the winner’s choice.” Hayes’ post landed in the wake of a pointed takedown from Multicoin Capital co-founder Kyle Samani , who called Hyperliquid “in most respects everything wrong with crypto,” while listing objections “Founder literally fled his home country to build, openly facilitates crime and terror, closed source, permissioned.” Since $HYPE is bad @KyleSamani let’s make a bet. I bet that from 00:00 UTC 10 Feb 2026 to 00:00 UTC 31 July 2026 $HYPE will out perform any shitcoin >$1bn mcap on coingecko in USD terms. You choose your champion. Loser donates $100k to a charity of the winner’s choice. https://t.co/9n3TjxiRPk — Arthur Hayes (@CryptoHayes) February 8, 2026 Why Hyperliquid Could Be Superior The sparring unfolded alongside a separate thread of bullish commentary on Hyperliquid’s push into non-crypto derivatives via HIP-3, a product line that has begun listing equity and commodity perpetuals. Blockworks analyst Shaunda Devens, whose research was shared by Jon Charbonneau, argued that HIP-3 is already pulling meaningful activity outside pure crypto flow. In devens’ analysis of HIP-3 silver perpetuals versus CME/COMEX Micro Silver futures, Hyperliquid is framed less as a meme-driven venue and more as an attempt to build an always-on, order-driven derivatives market for traditional underlyings. The report notes that “ TradFi instruments now [account for] 31% of venue volume” with “daily notional above $5B,” positioning the silver contract as a stress test of whether those markets can hold up when the underlying is moving fast. “Pre-crash, Hyperliquid was competitive at top-of-book for the sizes that dominate perp flow,” the report said, citing a 2.4 bps median spread versus 3 bps on COMEX, and “median slippage was 0.5 bps from the benchmark.” But it also emphasized the capacity gap: roughly “~$230k within ±5 bps on Hyperliquid vs. ~$13M on COMEX,” a difference that matters as clip sizes rise. That trade-off sharpened during a violent silver selloff , when the report says both venues degraded but Hyperliquid developed a heavier execution tail. It cites a brief dislocation of more than 400 bps versus the benchmark before mean reversion via funding, and notes that “1% of Hyperliquid trades printed >50 bps from mid, vs. none on COMEX.” Hayes’ wager effectively reframes the dispute: not whether Hyperliquid is philosophically “good” or “bad,” but whether its growth narrative, especially around 24/7 access to non-crypto risk, translates into token outperformance relative to large-cap peers. If the next six months validate the thesis embedded in HIP-3: tight execution for retail-weighted flow, continuous trading when legacy venues are closed, and a path to less cycle-sensitive revenue, HYPE’s relative performance becomes a simple scoreboard. If not, the bet offers a high-visibility way for critics to test whether the market is pricing substance or momentum. At press time, HYPE traded at $32.275.