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Michael Nadeau, founder of The DeFi Report, says he remains bullish on Hyperliquid over the long run, but argues the latest move in HYPE looks mistimed. In a post on X, he said the market is leaning too hard into the bullish narrative just as on-chain activity and positioning data begin to soften.
Nadeau’s central point is not that Hyperliquid is broken. It is that the recent strength in HYPE may have outrun what the underlying data currently supports. “I’m a fan of both @Globalflows and HYPE, but think he’s early here,” Nadeau wrote. He added that HYPE had “been strong in the bear market (outperforming BTC) because of its token economics + the ‘TradFi/Oil futures’ narrative,” before arguing that “the reality is that Hyperliquid looks like a ‘risk-off’ chain, just like the rest of crypto.”
Bullish Hyperliquid Long Term, But Not Now
That distinction matters. Hyperliquid presents itself as a high-performance layer-1 built for a fully on-chain financial system, with on-chain order books for perpetuals and spot markets. Bulls have also focused on HYPE’s design: Hyperliquid says trading fees are directed to the community, while its assistance fund converts fees into HYPE and burns those tokens, and stakers can receive trading-fee discounts. In other words, when Nadeau mentions “token economics,” he is referring to the structural features that have made HYPE attractive even in a difficult market.
He also briefly points to the “TradFi/Oil futures” narrative, which has become one of the more powerful stories around Hyperliquid in recent weeks. The platform’s pitch is that it can extend crypto’s 24/7 market structure into more traditional assets, and oil-linked perpetuals on Hyperliquid saw a burst of attention during the recent geopolitical shock around Iran, when traders used the venue to price crude outside normal exchange hours. That backdrop helped feed the idea that Hyperliquid was becoming a real-time macro trading venue rather than just another crypto chain.
Nadeau’s pushback is that the numbers no longer line up neatly with that narrative. “Fees are down 56%. Volumes are down 55%. Open interest is down 44%. Bridged assets are down 32%,” he wrote, adding that there had been “very few inflows over the last 30 days.” These numbers are key. Fees and volume speak to how much actual trading is happening. Open interest tracks how much derivatives exposure is still outstanding. Bridged assets are a rough signal for how much capital is moving onto the network.
He sharpened the point further by saying, “The reality is it’s the same 50k users on HYPE that we saw last year.” That is a blunt way of framing the concern: price may be running on narrative expansion while user growth and capital inflows remain comparatively flat.
Nadeau then shifts from fundamentals to market structure. He says oil futures volume on Hyperliquid peaked on March 9 and has trended lower since, undercutting one of the main catalysts behind the move. At the same time, he argues HYPE is “locally overbought,” citing an RSI of 67 and says the token is running into resistance at its 50-week moving average, a longer-term technical level many chart watchers treat as an important trend line.
His skepticism extends to PURR as well. PURR, now trading on Nasdaq as Hyperliquid Strategies Inc., describes itself as a digital-asset treasury company focused on accumulating HYPE and giving US and institutional investors exposure to the token. Nadeau called buying that vehicle in a “risk-off bear market” a “head-scratcher,” especially because, in his view, there is still little evidence that traditional finance is urgently chasing HYPE exposure. He noted that HYPE is up 93% since January 20, while PURR has gained 87% over the same period.
The net result is a measured warning, not a bearish capitulation. Nadeau is still “bullish long term,” but for now he is “fading the recent action.” For traders, that leaves a clear takeaway: the long-term Hyperliquid thesis may still be intact, but in his view the short-term setup no longer offers an especially attractive entry.
At press time, HYPE traded at $41.031.
