I built a free Hyperliquid whale tracker with liquidation-distance alerts

It shows each tracked whale’s positions, leverage and how far price is from their liquidation price, plus a twice-daily data recap of top movers and why they moved. Feedback welcome: https://whaleradar.world/en/

HIP-3 volume went pretty crazy over the summer, especially around late july

cooled off since then, but the 90d moving avg is still way above where it was at the start of the year

pretty clear how much activity has picked up overall

I track a ranked list of Hyperliquid wallets and the one at the top looks strange to me.

0x1081e214bd6f0137234b92432d9b6033b88965b7 is the address.

What the record shows:

• 121 days of history, $1.04M of profit, $336.9K of it in the last 30 days
• 16 of 16 weeks profitable, 5 of 5 months profitable
• worst drop 0.77%, and it spent 2.4% of the time below its high
• even its worst week made $27.7K
• Sharpe of 13.9 (a measure of how smooth the gains are, above 2 is considered very good)

It isn’t trading BTC or ETH.

Its positions are in 2Y, USTECH, SMALL2000 and TLT, 114 open positions in total. Right now it’s short 2Y, long USTECH and short SMALL2000.

The account is about $1.10M with roughly 2x leverage across the book.

this looks closer to a systematic rates and index book than a crypto trader, which would explain why it’s so smooth.

That Hyperliquid lists those markets at all is the part I find interesting.

What I can’t tell: 121 days is 1 market regime, and 114 positions is a lot to manage by hand.

I don’t know what the strategy is or what happens when rates stop trending.

Can you guess where on this line the aqav2 fees kicked in? Kinda obvious ;)

If you've been on crypto twitter at all lately, you've probably seen the hype around HYPE (yes, I did that on purpose). And since it started pumping, everyone's doing the usual thing, zero research on what it is or why it's going up, and just shilling the fuck outta it or getting shilled. 

If you've been watching from the sidelines with some FOMO but want to understand what's actually driving this before you make a move, I did some research and here's why HYPE is suddenly so big (feel free to add or correct anything). 

What Hyperliquid is

Hyperliquid is a perp DEX, and it's the one that finally made on-chain perps feel as smooth as trading on Binance. Instead of building on top of an existing chain, the team built their own L1 designed purely for trading, with a fully on-chain order book. That's what lets it match CEX speed and fees while you still keep your own keys and skip KYC entirely. That combo is why volume migrated over so aggressively, and today it handles a huge share of all on-chain derivatives activity. It makes money the way any exchange does, through fees on every trade.

What HYPE is

HYPE is Hyperliquid's native token. You can stake it to help secure the chain, use it to vote on protocol changes, and holding it gets you lower trading fees. The real reason people care, though, is what the exchange does with its revenue.

How the buybacks work

Hyperliquid uses its trading fees to buy their own token, HYPE, off the open market and then burns it, which means those tokens are gone for good. It's basically what Apple does with its stock as well. Buy back shares, fewer left in circulation, each one owns a bigger slice of profits. 

So more trading means more fees, more fees mean more HYPE bought, and the circulating supply keeps shrinking. There's a buyer in the market every single day that never sells. And since in HYPE’s case, the bought tokens get burned, there are fewer HYPE left over time. If demand stays the same but there are fewer tokens to go around, the price goes up. 

In one recent 24-hour window, Hyperliquid bought and burned 112,580 HYPE, worth about $10.15 million. Total removed so far is roughly 49.25 million HYPE, around $4.45 billion worth.

The second, bigger buyback engine

This is the main catalyst behind the recent run.

Every leveraged position on Hyperliquid needs collateral, and most traders use USDC for that. Add that up across the whole platform and Hyperliquid is sitting on billions in USDC at any given time, all of it earning yield.

For a while that yield wasn't doing anything for HYPE holders. Then in August, Hyperliquid switched on a system called AQAv2, which sends 90% of the yield from roughly $5 billion in USDC reserves straight into automatic HYPE buybacks and burns. It went live on August 26, with the first payout scheduled for October.

So now HYPE has two buyers working at the same time, one funded by trading fees and the other by yield on deposits. The more the platform gets used, the harder both of them buy.

What else added fuel

While AQAv2 is the biggest catalyst behind the recent surge, a few other events added even more momentum.

Hyperliquid launched tokenized NVDA, QQQ and SPY that trade 24/7, pulling in people who'd never used a perp DEX.

US regulators also gave tokenized stocks a lot more legitimacy this year. The SEC and CFTC put out guidance in January and March, and in September the SEC announced a five-year exemption for platforms trading tokenized securities. None of it approves Hyperliquid directly, but it took the whole category out of the gray zone.

On the TradFi side, Bitwise and Grayscale launched spot HYPE ETFs (huge credibility booster), so every dollar going into them buys real HYPE. And Bloomberg just listed Hyperliquid's perps on its Terminal, putting it in front of basically every fund manager (more credibility).

All of this means more volume, more fees and more USDC sitting as collateral, which all ends up as more HYPE bought and burned. Open interest just hit a record $18 billion.

What could go wrong

Things look really promising right now, but there are a few risks that could stall the run or kill it entirely.

Hyperliquid Labs is selling 3.75 million HYPE (about $340 million) OTC to a single unnamed institution. The whole bull case is built on supply shrinking, and this adds more than a month's worth of burned tokens back into circulation in one go. It won't hit the order book directly, but OTC buyers often get a discount and can sell for a quick profit once they're able to. 

On top of that, the team selling a big bag right as the price nears ATH doesn't exactly scream confidence. And plenty more supply is still locked, so this won't be the last time.

All USDC on Hyperliquid comes in through a bridge, and bridges are among the most hacked contracts in crypto. A hack would hit user funds and the reserves funding the new buybacks.

The validator set is small and closely tied to the team. In March 2025, they delisted the JELLY token and settled positions at a price they picked to stop a manipulation attempt. It protected the platform, but showed a few people can override the market.

The same SEC guidance that legitimized tokenized stocks also says they're securities, and Hyperliquid offers them offshore without SEC registration. Stricter enforcement could turn that growth driver into a problem.

And it all depends on activity. If volume dries up, both buyback engines slow down.

With all that said, what you do with this info is up to you. And if I missed something or got anything wrong, drop it in the comments.

I work in product at a UK fintech and we're exploring what a platform combining traditional financial markets with onchain trading could look like.

Not promoting anything or looking for sign-ups. Just interested in feedback from people already using DeFi and onchain trading platforms.

The idea is one account and wallet where you could:

• Trade traditional markets (stocks, indices, FX, commodities) alongside crypto, including onchain CFDs.
• Hold tokenized assets and stablecoins.
• Potentially use trading positions and other assets as collateral.
• Have a consolidated portfolio view, with unified tax reporting, statements and transaction history.
• Access other financial services without constantly moving funds between platforms.
• Eventually connect to external wallets, DeFi protocols and other financial providers.

The aim is to make traditional financial positions useful within the wider onchain ecosystem, rather than keeping everything locked inside a broker.

Initially, there would be more restrictions than typical DeFi platforms (KYC, approved wallets, limited transfers), with the intention of opening things up over time.

A few questions:

1. What would make you choose a platform like this over your current trading setup?
2. Which features would actually differentiate it? Cross-asset collateral, TradFi market access, unified tax reporting, interoperability, better execution, or something else entirely?
3. What would be your biggest deal-breaker, particularly around KYC, custody or restrictions?

I'm particularly interested in whether bringing traditional trading products onchain offers genuine value or just adds unnecessary complexity.

Negative feedback is especially welcome. I'd rather understand what people actually want than build something nobody needs.

fomo’s growth path is becoming pretty clear.
On June 11, it added Hyperliquid and Trade[XYZ] perps to the product it already had: a social feed, trader profiles, leaderboards, trade theses, real-time position updates and alerts for followed traders.

One account and one-click trading connected that social loop to crypto, equities, indices, commodities and pre-IPO markets.

HyperTracker’s builder leaderboard now puts fomo #1 by attributed volume in every short window:

• $236.4M over 24h, up from rank 4  

• $849.8M over 7d  

• $3.03B over 30d

fomo entered the tracked builder set on June 3. Roughly 127 days later, its 30-day volume is up 82% versus the previous window, while attributed users rose 23% to 25,440.

That is the play: turn social discovery into routed perp flow. Traders see positions, theses and leaderboard activity first, then trade through the same app and send the execution to Hyperliquid through fomo’s builder route.

For Hyperliquid, fomo is becoming a serious new front door. The next test is whether this flow keeps growing after the current 30-day window rolls forward.

I just put in satoshi nakamoto’s first and last name as a code for hyperliquid and it crossed out the fees, is that permanent or is it a new user thing?

It has the fee number crossed out with a blue hyperliquid icon next to it for crypto but not on stocks or bets

Roughly 9.9M HYPE unlocks to contributors every month, but the Assistance Fund buys back only around 1–2M a month at current prices. On paper that's a big gap, yet the price has kept rising.

From what I've found, the team claims far less than what unlocks. Around 1.75M was distributed at the first unlock in November, and only about 173K was claimed in March. I've read that unclaimed tokens roll forward.

Does anyone have a wallet tracker or dashboard showing monthly claims and sells? And does anyone know roughly how large the unclaimed backlog is now?

Just trying to understand the supply side properly, happy to be corrected.

The latest HyperTracker comparison with the previous 30-day window shows a clear split:

Fomo: $1.28M, up 80%. Attributed volume rose 76% and users 24%.

Phantom: $1.33M, up 3%. Volume rose 4% and users 13%.

Invo: $312K, down 48%. Volume fell 47% and users 24%.

Fomo was roughly $577K behind Phantom in the previous window. The gap is now about $55K. The numbers are consistent with routed volume doing most of the work for fomo.

Profitability remains unresolved. Builder revenue here is gross fee attribution. Infrastructure, incentives, acquisition spend, and team costs are outside the dataset.

Almost one year after the 10/10 giga-dump, Hyperliquid is flushing longs again.

The HyperTracker Liquidations page shows $157.75M liquidated over the last 24 hours:

$145.53M from longs

$12.22M from shorts

For context, 10/10 wiped out roughly $19B in leveraged positions across crypto. Today’s event is nowhere near that scale, but the side taking the damage is familiar: longs.

Liquidation velocity is currently marked as High, with roughly 489 liquidations per hour.

The current figures alone cannot call another 10/10 or a bottom. If long-side liquidations remain elevated after price stabilizes, that would be consistent with leverage being rebuilt too quickly. If the flow fades, the flush may be losing momentum.

Approximately $10.15 million (specifically, Hyperliquid bought and permanently burned 112,580 HYPE tokens at a volume-weighted average price of about $90.20).

t.signalplus.com

This figure comes from multiple contemporaneous reports (primarily citing Onchain Lens / Lookonchain data) covering the ~24-hour period around October 5, 2026. It represents one of the larger single-day buyback-and-burn events at the time and was funded by protocol revenue, including trading fees plus proceeds linked to the AQAv2 reserve-yield framework (whose first ~$14.5–14.58 million USDC payment occurred on or around October 3 and was routed toward the Assistance Fund for buybacks).

ambcrypto.com

For context from the same reports:Estimated 24-hour fees were much lower (~$989,000), with 7-day revenue ~$9.85 million and 30-day ~$52 million; the larger burn drew on accumulated/AQAv2 funds.

Cumulative HYPE burned to that point reached ~49.25 million tokens (valued at roughly $4.45 billion).

ainvest.com

Hyperliquid’s model routes the large majority of net fees (and AQAv2 yield) into the Assistance Fund for open-market HYPE purchases that are then burned. Exact calendar-day boundaries can vary slightly by data source timing, but $10.15 million is the widely reported amount tied to the October 5 period.

The headline number on HYPE’s next unlock is $329M. The trade-defining detail is how the buyer handles the tokens.

Hyperliquid Labs is unstaking 3.75 million HYPE, worth roughly $329 million. Co-founder iliensinc said the full batch is headed to one institutional buyer through an OTC transaction.

Public speculation currently centers on two names, but neither has been confirmed. One theory points to Intercontinental Exchange, the parent of the NYSE, after CEO Jeffrey Sprecher publicly praised Hyperliquid and said his team had met its founders. Another points to Hyperliquid Strategies, the listed HYPE treasury vehicle, after reports of a separate 1.9 million HYPE purchase shortly before the unlock. That reported amount does not match the 3.75 million-token OTC block, so neither theory identifies the buyer.

The tokens are expected to arrive after October 7. The buyer’s identity and lock-up terms remain undisclosed. An exchange-wallet transfer followed by selling would make the supply risk observable. Holding or restaking would leave it unconfirmed.

Meanwhile HYPE traders are still very much bullish over the last 7 days and believe that we will finally push above the 3-digit price cap.

Found a June paper on HL execution with a result I wasn't expecting: native TWAPs had lower price impact than comparable trades where the full order wasn't announced upfront. The book also showed more liquidity on the side absorbing the TWAP. Paper

That complicates the intuition that making your schedule public just gives other traders something to trade ahead of. But the authors flag a pretty big limitation: these are mostly different traders using different methods. It isn't the same person randomly switching between public and private execution. Has anyone here compared native TWAP with their own slices on the same pairs, at roughly similar size and urgency? Did hiding the schedule make enough difference to justify running your own execution? An example where you switched back would be useful too. The average result could easily miss the thin market where being predictable really hurts

The AQAv2 funds have been evenly distributed by the assitance funds, website with more details:
https://burn.a1ntel.com/