The Eye of the Crypto Storm: Hyperliquid—No Board of Directors, No Investors, the "Leverage Tool"

The decentralized exchange Hyperliquid, with only 11 people, has become the epicenter of a crypto storm, boasting daily trading volumes exceeding $13 billion thanks to its anonymity and high leverage. This platform, which has no board of directors and rejects venture capital, saw over $10 billion in liquidations in a single day during the recent market crash. However, this model has also plunged it into controversy, as mysterious and precisely timed short positions on its platform just before recent market volatility have sparked speculation of insider trading.

Written by: Long Yue

Source: Wallstreetcn

A decentralized exchange with only about 11 employees, no external investors, and no board of directors is rapidly rising to become a crypto giant with daily trading volumes exceeding $13 billion, thanks to the anonymity and high leverage it offers traders.

This platform, called Hyperliquid, has achieved over $1 billion in annualized revenue through entirely self-funded operations. Its unique model and massive market influence are making it the latest center of controversy in the cryptocurrency space.

According to a recent report by Theinformation, Hyperliquid became a focal point during the recent crypto market crash for handling over $10 billion in forced liquidation trades, an event that brought this previously little-known exchange into the public eye.

What has drawn even more scrutiny is that just minutes before former U.S. President Trump made major tariff remarks that triggered market volatility, two user accounts on the Hyperliquid platform placed large, precisely timed short bets on the market. This "coincidence" immediately sparked intense speculation about possible insider information behind anonymous trades, highlighting the potential risks of operating in a regulatory gray area.

Despite the controversy, Hyperliquid’s growth momentum remains strong. Its trading volume has reached 10% of the comparable product on Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange. Founded by Harvard graduate Jeff Yan, the platform is attracting attention from retail investors to large institutions with its unique tokenomics and disruptive ambitions toward traditional finance.

“No Board of Directors”: Founder-Centric Structure

Hyperliquid’s rise is closely tied to the technical background and personal vision of its founder, Jeff Yan. Growing up in Silicon Valley and graduating from Harvard University, Yan is a gold and silver medalist in the International Physics Olympiad and briefly worked at the high-frequency trading firm Hudson River Trading in New York. The collapse of FTX prompted him to create Hyperliquid, a decentralized platform where users can self-custody their assets.

According to people familiar with him, Jeff Yan is highly accomplished technically and ambitious. He has built a lean but efficient team around himself. Information on Hyperliquid’s website shows that most core members are anonymous or use pseudonyms, such as co-founder “iliensinc” and head of market strategy “Xulian.” Team members hail from top institutions like Caltech and MIT, and have worked at renowned companies such as Citadel and Airtable.

This structure gives Jeff Yan immense autonomy. “He has no board of directors, no investors calling to tell him what to do,” said David Schamis, incoming CEO of the publicly listed company Hyperliquid Strategies, which plans to hold Hyperliquid tokens. “That’s great, because he can focus entirely on the mission itself.”

HYPE Token: Rejecting VC, a Growth Engine with a $10 Billion Market Cap

Hyperliquid’s most distinctive feature is its growth model. It has not followed the traditional startup path of seeking venture capital, instead rejecting investment intentions from top VC firms including Paradigm and Founders Fund. Instead, the platform has chosen to “bootstrap” by issuing its own HYPE token.

“When Hyperliquid was just starting out, the standard approach was to raise large rounds of funding from VCs to generate hype,” Jeff Yan said in an August interview with the “Wu Blockchain” podcast. “But that always felt a bit fake to me; it’s not real progress.”

Hyperliquid distributed 31% of the total token supply for free to users via “airdrop” based on their trading volume, successfully attracting a large user base. The platform also uses most of its trading fee revenue to buy back HYPE tokens from the market, reducing supply and driving up the price.

This strategy has achieved astonishing success: the price of HYPE tokens soared from $3.90 at launch last November to $38 today, with a circulating market cap of about $10 billion, making it one of the most successful token launches in history. Reportedly, nearly all well-known crypto funds, such as Paradigm, a16z, and Pantera, now hold HYPE tokens.

Leverage and Anonymity: A Swirl of Controversy and Market Impact

The core appeal of Hyperliquid for traders lies in its two main features: anonymity and high leverage. Most of the platform’s trading volume comes from perpetual contracts—a highly leveraged derivative with no expiration date, unavailable on compliant U.S. platforms. Since Hyperliquid only provides trading software rather than acting as a broker, it does not need to verify user identities.

It was precisely this anonymity that caused a stir during the market movement on October 10. Just minutes before Trump’s major tariff remarks triggered market volatility, two anonymous accounts’ precisely timed short bets yielded huge returns.

Matt Zhang, founder of crypto fund management company Hivemind, pointed out: “Hyperliquid is benefiting from the fact that a large number of people want to trade anonymously.”

During the subsequent market crash, high leverage became an “accelerator” for the sell-off. According to CoinGlass data, the entire crypto industry saw the largest liquidation in history that day, totaling at least $19 billion, with Hyperliquid alone forcibly liquidating over $10 billion in trades. While forced liquidation is a standard risk control measure for exchanges to protect themselves, its massive scale undoubtedly intensified market panic. Since Hyperliquid is unregulated globally, users have very limited recourse.

“Exchange for Everything”: Ambitions from Crypto to Traditional Finance

Jeff Yan’s vision goes far beyond cryptocurrencies. He hopes Hyperliquid can “accommodate all finance,” allowing people to launch various investment products on its blockchain.

Alvin Hsia, co-founder of Ventuals, said this reflects their “vision of becoming an exchange for everything.” In the future, users may not only be able to trade crypto perpetual contracts, but also public stocks, indices, private company equity, and even interest rates.

This vision seems to be gradually becoming reality. A company called Trade.XYZ recently launched a perpetual index contract on Hyperliquid. At the same time, the platform is also starting to attract attention from traditional financial markets.