Hyperliquid’s Prediction Play
gm Bankless Nation,
During a crypto cycle where few communities are feeling their best, Hyperliquid is continuing to make its fans happy. Today's Issue ⬇️
- ☀️ Need to Know: World Liberty's Revenge?
Trump's DeFi firm countersues Justin Sun.
- 🗣️ Analysis: Hyperliquid’s Prediction Play
Can Hyperliquid take on Kalshi and Polymarket?
- 🎧 Latest Pod: 'Finding Satoshi' Investigators
Can another doc get to the bottom of Satoshi's identity?
Sponsor: MetaMask - Spend crypto anywhere online and AFK with MetaMask Card.
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NEED TO KNOW
World Liberty's Revenge?
- 💣 Trump-Backed World Liberty Financial Countersues Billionaire Investor Justin Sun. Tensions are rising between Justin Sun and World Liberty Financial.
- 🇰🇵 Arbitrum Faces Restraining Order as North Korea Victims Target Seized KelpDAO Funds. Victims of DPRK terror, awarded hundreds of millions by a U.S. court, are now seeking to recover their damages from Arbitrum.
- 💰 Tom Lee's Bitmine Surpasses $10B Worth of Staked ETH. The DATco has amassed 4.3% of circulating ETH supply, rapidly rising to become Ethereum's second-largest staking entity.
📸
Daily Market Snapshot: BTC punched back through $80K for the first time in months, even as broader markets trended downward.
| Prices as of 5pm ET |
24hr |
7d |
 |
Crypto $2.62T |
↗ 1.3% |
↗ 3.8% |
 |
BTC $80,027 |
↗ 1.5% |
↗ 4.1% |
 |
ETH $2,353 |
↗ 1.2% |
↗ 2.8% |
. . .
ANALYSIS
Breaking Down Hyperliquid’s Prediction Play
Hyperliquid just introduced a new class of yes-or-no trades. The exchange's latest upgrade introduces functionality for prediction markets, options trading, and essentially any market that resolves in binary fashion. In the exchange’s own terms, these are called “outcome markets,” fully collateralized binary contracts that can underwrite all the markets I listed above, though only one is currently live: a market for whether BTC ends the day up or down. This single market has had explosive activity out of the gate, which begs the question, will Polymarket and Kalshi soon go up in smoke? Given that Kalshi’s Head of Crypto was one of the initial authors of the HIP-4 proposal, it’d be quite ironic if it did. But, when we examine what HIP-4 actually is and what it unlocks for the venue, it does not look like this is Hyperliquid’s primary ambition (for now). Rather, HIP-4 looks to be about adding optionality for traders to craft the most comprehensive positions possible, reinforcing the exchange’s status as the best place to trade assets, on- and offchain.
How HIP-4 WorksFundamentally, HIP-4 markets function the exact same way that markets on Polymarket or Kalshi do. A trader buys either yes or no shares to express a view on whether something will occur, currently whether BTC’s price will close above today's mark price at 06:00 UTC. If they’re correct, their shares settle to $1. If they’re wrong, their shares settle to $0, losing whatever capital they put in.
There is no leverage, no “liquidations” (in a perpetual sense), and the contracts are fully collateralized. Settlement occurs in the ecosystem’s primary stablecoin, USDH, against HyperCore's mark prices for that market’s tracked asset. Like all the other features of the HyperCore (the exchange layer of Hyperliquid), HIP-4 contracts compose with HyperEVM and portfolio margin, meaning they are plugged into the rest of Hyperliquid's trading stack rather than sitting beside it. Multi-outcome markets and broader assets will roll out in stages, with all HIP-4 outcome markets being launched by the Hyperliquid core team for the foreseeable future. Permissionless deployment will come, though the timeline is unknown and will be determined by “user feedback.”
What HIP-4 Actually Unlocks
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LATEST POD
“Finding Satoshi”
Bill Cohan and Tyler Maroney unpack their new documentary Finding Satoshi, a four-year investigation into the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto.
They explore why Satoshi’s identity still matters, the cypherpunk roots of Bitcoin, the public interest behind the mystery, and what the search reveals about privacy, money, power, and the mythology at the heart of crypto.
Watch the full episode 👇
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