It's not just the market
Prepared by: Eric, Foresight News
Since the end of February, the situation in the Middle East has been so tense. The global financial markets were shaken by a massive air strike by the United States and Israel against Iran。
On the weekends of the war, when traditional financial markets closed, Wall Street traders waited only for Monday’s openings in anxiety, another wave of investors traded wildly on the chain。
They are trading in gold, crude oil, silver, not coins。
The forecast markets, such as Polymarket and Kalshi, have seen a surge in trade due to war-related contracts and become the focus of the market. But on the other side of the shot, perp DEX, including Hyperliquid, is also "rich by war": large commodity contracts on the platform surged, and the chain derivatives of traditional assets, such as gold, crude oil, silver, and so on, ushered in unprecedented liquidity outbreaks。
War dividend forecast for markets
Before looking further at perp DEX, it is necessary to review the projected market performance in this geopolitical crisis. After all, it is very bright data from Polymark and Kalshi that for the first time people really feel that the time has come for everything to bet。
According to Dune Analytics, as of the week of 1 March 2025, traders were betting $425.4 million on geopolitical issues on Polymarket, well ahead of $163.9 million a week earlier. The volume of transactions across the platform reached a record $2.4 billion, a significant increase from $1.8 billion in the previous week. Kalshi also performed well, and its contract "will Khamenei leave?" attracted more than $54.5 million in transactions。
Behind these figures is the strong motivation of war, a globally known event, for the desire of platform users to trade. When missiles cut through the night sky in Tehran, when Trump announced "Hamenei is dead" in social media, the price curve of the market was projected to reflect "the truth" more quickly than any news bulletin。
But what needs to be made clear is that there's no derogatory meaning to be paid for. Forecasting markets provides an unprecedented way for people to express their judgment about major events in real money and silver. As Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour put it, these platforms are essentially "to make uncertainty priceable" and the war has simply pushed this pricing demand to the extreme。
"Crazy Saturday" on Hyperliquid
The projection of markets is undoubtedly a direct gain from war in the Web3 field, but another slightly “obsolete” track, which also opened the door to a new world as a result of this conflict。
On 1 March, the day after the war between Iraq and the United States officially started, the Iranian side admitted that Supreme Leader Khamenei had died in the war. On that day, the encrypted currency market rebounded quickly after a short fall, with bitcoin fluctuations of slightly over 7 per cent a day, and the reaction was not particularly dramatic。
On weekends, most of the attention is still on encrypted money, which in their eyes is the only “large commodity” that can be traded without restrictions on weekends, but that is not the case。
On 1 March, Bloomberg reported that on the first day of the war, Saturday, the price of the permanent oil contract on Hyperliquid rose by about 5 per cent to $706 per barrel, while the price of the permanent contracts for gold and silver increased by about 1.3 per cent and 2 per cent to $5323 and $94.9 per ounce, respectively. Silver futures were traded in excess of $227 million within 24 hours and gold futures were traded in approximately $173 million。
Gold, silver, and crude oil contract trading markets were on line at the end of 2025 and early 2026, the largest HIP-3 market trade.xyz. In addition, February 28 is not the peak of daily transactions, and on January 29th, when $120/ounces of silver were created, single-day transactions on silver contracts in Hyperliquid exceeded $1.2 billion, and on February 5th the figure was refreshed to over $3.5 billion, accounting for 68 per cent of total transactions in the HIP-3 RWA market on that day。
The crude oil market at the beginning of the chain was equally bright。
Prior to the outbreak of the conflict, the average daily volume of crude oil contracts in Hyperliquid was only about $20 million. Following the outbreak of the war, and as the price of crude oil continues to rise, Hyperliquid's single-day sales on the crude oil contract quickly broke $100 billion. On March 9, that figure came close to $2 billion, just below the amount of bitcoin contracts on the platform, and dumped two blocks of the Ethera。
According to Flowscan, on 8 March, the Hyperliquid HIP-3 market traded more than $880 million, the highest volume in the history of the weekend. Only a week later, that figure was updated to almost $966 million。
Sufficient liquidity on weekends not only provides investors with a place where money never sleeps, but also provides better pricing mechanisms for traditional financial markets. The Arete.xyz management partner stated on X that this was the first time that the decentrization platform achieved price discovery for traditional assets。
As we continue to develop, there is no need for traders to be too busy after Monday. Maybe they've already made the deal on Hyperliquid over the weekend, and maybe the opening price is very fair and there's not much arbitrage。
Of course, it's not just a chain platform。
Who's watching
Major exchanges have long had to smell business opportunities。
You're familiar with the exchange, the coins, OKX, Bitget, and so on. OKX has been on the gold contract since May of last year, and Currency and Bitget was last December。
Exchanges have not focused on these assets in the past, probably because of the low volatility and the fact that the "investment" properties are larger than the "trading" ones and do not fit in. But with Trump taking Maduro alive and decapitating Khamenei, large assets such as gold and silver oil are more volatile than once in the past, and now they are lying dead。
Encrypted money cannot be helped, traditional financial markets are festive, and anyone can see it. An encrypted currency exchange is born without a break, and there is no trade in large asset markets on the line, and the same is true for the "air" trade, with a few more。
Not only is it an encrypted currency exchange, but the temple of high-quality global assets: NASDAQ and NCIS are equally reluctant to give up pricing rights for large commodities。
As early as last year, NASDAQ and Nutschaft turned their backs on the market, not only by studying the monetization of securities, but also by supporting 7x24 transactions. It is clear, however, that it is not easy for traditional institutions to move out of this path, and that the rules that have lasted for centuries, if they are to change, are to change simultaneously upstream and downstream: who is going to make the market? Who's going to liquidate? Can it happen? It's all on the table。
The details are now hidden under the card table. But this month, NASDAQ announced cooperation with the US-owned Encrypted Currency Exchange, Kraken, xStocks, and the New Haven parent company, ICE, announced a $25 billion valuation of investment OKX. It is clear that they do not want to hand over the sword that they have shot down, and the arrow is on the string, waiting for the order to launch。
During the second weekend of March, Bloomberg again reported on the large commodity transaction data of Hyperliquid, a short period of two consecutive reports that made a difference for many sensitive people: a platform that relied on data and information for money began to focus on the chain exchange and used it as a reference for the trade price of large commodities. But it also raises another question, why did the encrypted money exchange in the head get so early that it didn't get so much attention
For example, on March 9th the XAGUSDT contract was sold at $6.464 billion, compared to over $3.5 billion in Hyperliquid. Although Hyperliquid alone has only 54 per cent of its transactions in this single market, it has over 300 million users, and the total number of Hyperliquid users is close to 1.7 million。
Winners eat
According to the encrypted asset researcher ASXN, the total value of Hyperliquid transactions exceeds $8 trillion (other statistics show $4 trillion, with possibly ASXN double-counting between the parties), of which accounts with transactions exceeding $1 billion accounted for 76 per cent of total transactions and accounts with transactions ranging from $100 million to $1 billion accounted for 16 per cent of total transactions。
There are no specific market accounts on Hyperliquid, and some of the hundreds of billion-dollar transactions should be controlled by the market. But even so, 76 per cent is enough proof that most users trading on Hyperliquid are actually giant whale investors, and while the overall volume may not be the same as CEX, the price of a genuine silver deal is more relevant。
But it still doesn't answer why the market chooses and sees well perp DEX. In his selection of Perp DEX, which is a "suffering resistance from the world" , Chinese users’ views on perp DEX have not been well documented, and CEX has been turned to DEX for profit or for fury。
But for foreigners, that's another picture。
The founder of the equation news, 00-year-old trader Vida, shared news on Telegram to explain why the foreigners were crazy about Hyperliquid. According to a screenshot provided by X user JinMu, Vida attributed the cause to strict KYC and the poor user experience of the US Home Exchange。
A number of investment agencies in the Web3 industry have also indicated to the writer that China’s high net-value investors, home-based institutions, etc., have little confidence in crypto. Even Li Lin, the founder of the fire coin in Hong Kong, holds a bitcoin space indirectly through the IBIT issued by Belet. By contrast, large foreign capital or high net value individuals are more receptive to crypto, and many traditional financial institutions are testing Web3 products。
This is no wonder that Bloomberg began to pay frequent attention to Hyperliquid in March, as giant whale users on the platform may include traditional financial institutions that cannot be mobile for some weekends。
AS FOR CEX, YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHO'S DOING IT. THE DIMENSION OF "REFERENCE" DOES NOT MATCH THE DEX. IN ADDITION TO THIS, THE SELF-CUSTODY OF THE DEX, THE TRANSPARENCY OF TRANSACTIONS AND UNRESTRICTED LEVERAGE PROVIDE A FERTILE GROUND FOR THE FREE EXERCISE OF FINANCIAL TRADERS。
"such a non-ruled platform will sooner or later be taken over by regulation."
It is believed that this is a rhetoric that many have seen in the recent past. New assets on the line do not need to be reviewed, funds do not ask their source and leverage do not matter. These are indeed acts of dancing on the regulatory red line, but they may be a platform that is tacitly present in the grey zone. Like TikTok, the government could shut it down for "national security" reasons, but the American people refused, as did stakeholders and the generals who wanted to make money in the matter。
In the future, the miracle of gold and crude oil can be replicated when certain international events affect, for example, the prices of metals, food and raw materials. According to the writer, regulation in the short term does not kill Hyperliquid. The Golden Triangle, which did not exist at that time, was not entirely wiped out because of the drug itself, but because someone might want to earn it. The standard Puldo Jones Index authorizes Hyperliquid, not any CEX, to launch the 500 Index perpetuity contract, which is the best proof。
Hyperliquid and a crowd of perp DEX have the same reason that it has the value of being present without moving to certain core interests。
Pricing for Uncertainty
WHILE THE HIP-3 IS ON FIRE, THE HIP-4 IS WORKING QUIETLY。
HIP-4 OF THE ONLINE TESTING NETWORK ON FEBRUARY 2, 2026 INTRODUCED THE "RESULTS TRADING" FUNCTION, A TYPE OF CONTRACT THAT IS FULLY MORTGAGED AND SETTLED WITHIN FIXED PRICES AND DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY FOR PREDICTING MARKETS AND CLASS OPTIONS。
Unlike the permanent contract for the Hyperliquid core, the HIP-4 result contract has maturity dates, no leverage, no blast risk, settlement within predefined prices. For example, if you think that bitcoin will break $80,000 at the end of March, you can buy the corresponding result contracts. If the amount of bitcoin does exceed $80,000 at maturity, the contract is settled at the upper limit; if not, at the lower limit, the loss is limited to the initial input。
The market generally interprets HIP-4 as "Hyperliquid marches into the forecast market", but it may underestimate its strategic significance. The real value of HIP-4 is that it expands Hyperliquid from a purely derivative exchange to a more integrated "uncertainty pricing platform"。
Isn't Polymarket priced for uncertainty? It's true that the market is more probabilities, and when you think that there's an 80% probability, but the amount you're going to invest is going to drop the probabilities directly to 99%, you naturally choose to reduce the funds。
As a result, contracts can see risk preferences in terms of volume of funds. Or, for example, if bitcoin will break $80,000 at the end of March, maybe a lot of people in Polymucket will choose not to, but maybe in Hyperliquid, you'll see a lot of people buying an increase in options. This means that while many people do look down, it is not so pessimistic or that these investors believe that there is a need to guard against possible increases。
If bitcoin really rose to 80,000 at the end of March, you waited for 79,000 to see the probability on Polymark rise from 20% to 80%, which is too late。
In addition, the HIP-4 complements the existing permanent contract with Hyperliquid. Under the same account and bond system, traders can create a more sophisticated and efficient portfolio of investments by seamlessly switching linear derivatives (renewal contracts) and non-linear derivatives (results contracts). This "portfolio" is the advantage of Hyperliquid over a dedicated forecasting market platform。
Money never sleeps
We are witnessing an era in which money never sleeps。
On the one hand, forecasting the market as a race track on the edge of gambling allows events with definite results to be embezzled in money; on the other hand, chain trading platforms allow sufficient liquidity to price contingencies on holidays that are otherwise off the market。
The arbitrage created by asymmetrical information became the survival of a platform. The platform's boundaries are expanding, and they're now confined to the Earth for the time being, and in 10 or 20 years, you might be able to trade in moon minerals on a ship to Mars。
While we welcome the fact that finance, a product invented by humans, has taken a step further in the chain of blocks, we must recall:
I have a career and no career. I'm going nowhere
