HYPE Within $11 of ATH as SpaceX Perps Drive Rally

HYPE climbed to around $48 on May 19, after synthetic SpaceX perpetual contracts launched on the Hyperliquid-linked platform Trade.xyz, bringing the token just $11 away from its September 2025 record high near $59.

The rally has also tracked rising interest in tokenized real-world assets and a string of institutional moves tied to the Hyperliquid ecosystem.

Synthetic SpaceX Markets Push Hyperliquid Back Into Focus

According to data shared by Santiment, the token has gained roughly 24% from its May 13 low near $38. The on-chain analytics firm said social dominance around HYPE spiked as traders reacted to several developments landing within the same week, including the passage of the CLARITY Act on May 14 and Coinbase becoming an official USDC deployer on Hyperliquid.

But the latest trigger behind HYPE’s move higher was the May 18 debut of SPCX, a synthetic SpaceX pre-IPO perpetual market on Trade.xyz, which helped add another 7% to the token’s price per Santiment’s data.

The product launched with an implied SpaceX valuation of about $1.8 trillion, giving crypto traders exposure to a private company that is still inaccessible through public equity markets.

“The rails-phase thesis usually runs one way: TradFi brings its products onto chains,” Santiment wrote. “This time it’s running backwards — crypto rails are creating TradFi-adjacent products the regulated system can’t.”

At the time of writing, data from CoinGecko showed HYPE had risen 6.7% in the last 24 hours and nearly 17% during the past week. Meanwhile, monthly gains stood above 11%, while the token is still about 19% below its all-time high, reached eight months ago.

The move has also come as Hyperliquid continues to dominate on-chain perpetual futures trading. According to DefiLlama, the network has maintained at least double the perpetual trading volume of the next-largest chain every month this year, even as overall perp activity cooled from earlier 2026 peaks.

Revenue Growth and ETF Launches Are Adding to Bullish Sentiment

The crypto community is also paying attention to Hyperliquid’s revenue generation, with Bitwise researcher Cam Khosravi pointing out that it has generated more than $255 million in protocol revenue so far this year, which is more than the next two crypto applications combined.