Arthur Hayes Prices Hyperliquid (HYPE) at $150 While Multicoin Capital Sticks to $319

Hayes $150 vs Multicoin $319

Arthur Hayes and Multicoin Capital put two very different numbers on Hyperliquid (HYPE), and the gap between them frames the token's outlook better than any single forecast. Hayes, the BitMEX co-founder, argued in a March 2026 analysis that HYPE could reach $150 by August 2026. His case rested on trading volume migrating from centralized exchanges to the platform, growth in HIP-3 markets, and revenue routed into token buybacks, with annualized platform revenue near $1.4 billion as the working assumption. That deadline has passed, which makes the $150 figure a dated forecast rather than a live call. The buyback leg of his thesis does have grounding: research from CoinShares places the platform's cumulative revenue above $1.1 billion. Multicoin went further and later. In research published on June 25, 2026 by Spencer Applebaum, Shayon Sengupta and Tushar Jain, the fund argued Hyperliquid could become a venue where every asset class trades, generating roughly $8 billion in annual earnings by 2028 and supporting a theoretical $319 valuation for HYPE. Multicoin also disclosed that HYPE is one of the larger positions in its own fund, so the model reads as an invested party's bull case, not an independent call. Where the token actually trades: market data from October 21 puts the HYPE price near $81, with a market capitalization around $20.7 billion and a circulating supply of roughly 254 million tokens. The distance to Hayes's target is about 85%; the distance to Multicoin's is close to four times the current level. Neither number is a promise. Each is a conditional model, and the assumptions beneath them are what the coming quarters will test.

From Airdrop to $4.33 Trillion

The disagreement carries weight because the Hyperliquid ecosystem has produced verifiable activity under the token. Its foundations were laid in 2022 by a team around Jeff Yan, who judged that existing decentralized exchanges lagged centralized venues on speed and user experience. The mainnet went live in 2023 with an order book running directly on a purpose-built Layer 1 blockchain protocol, so users could trade without depositing assets with a centralized exchange. On November 29, 2024 the project issued HYPE and distributed 31% of the initial 1 billion supply to roughly 100,000 early users, one of the sector's most closely watched airdrops, with no traditional venture capital round behind it. HyperEVM followed in February 2025 and opened the chain to smart contracts, lending protocols and other DeFi applications. In October 2025 the HIP-3 update let qualifying developers stake 500,000 HYPE to launch new perpetual markets, including tokenized stocks, commodities and index products; cumulative volume on those markets had passed $514 billion by August 2026. Framework work under HIP-4 targets event-outcome contracts of the kind Polymarket popularized. CoinShares research puts cumulative trading volume above $4.33 trillion. The institutional perimeter widened in 2026 as exchange-traded products tied to HYPE came into view, with a related filing now on SEC EDGAR, and Pump.fun rolled out HYPE perpetuals with a 0.10% order fee. An October 20, 2026 ecosystem update opened Ensemble vault products on HyperEVM, and Yan has discussed the platform's future on Bloomberg Odd Lots and at DC Fintech Week. Traders who want the venue's mechanics step by step can follow our guide on how to trade on Hyperliquid. The risks CoinShares lists sit on the other side of the ledger: competition from Binance, Bybit and OKX centrally and Aster and dYdX in decentralized perps, validator-set concentration, technical security, and supply pressure after 3.75 million HYPE left the team allocation in October 2026 under an agreement linked to an over-the-counter buyer. Singapore's Monetary Authority has also noted that Hyperliquid's derivatives products sit outside its local regulatory oversight, as reported in October 2026.

The Assumption Behind Both Targets

Our reading: the two targets are not opposed, they are scaled differently. Both require Hyperliquid's revenue to keep compounding, and the $319 case cannot clear without volume drawn from markets outside crypto perps. That is the single assumption a reader can watch. HIP-3's $514 billion in cumulative volume shows non-crypto-linked products attract flow, though persistence is unproven. Near-term positioning cuts the other way: our related coverage records that top traders across venues flipped 87% short, a $97.87 million Bitcoin (BTC) long on the platform has neared liquidation, and a recent analyst sentiment ranking placed Hyperliquid first. If HIP-3 adoption stalls and team supply keeps arriving, $150 from $81 looks demanding; if traditional finance volume lands on the order book, Multicoin's arithmetic stops looking extreme.