Geopolitical events do not adhere to stock market opening times. When the US and Israel launched coordinated attacks on Iran on a Saturday at the end of February, the traditional commodity markets were closed. $HYPE (+0.31%)A decentralized perpetual futures exchange, which operates around the clock, was not.
$HYPE (+0.31%) is a crypto-native trading platform based on its own layer 1 blockchain. It is best known for its on-chain order book and permissionless market creation mechanism (HIP-3), which allows anyone to create perpetual futures on almost any asset. Since the escalation in the Middle East #hyperliquid has become a centralized venue for real-time commodity pricing outside of traditional trading hours. Its perpetual contract linked to oil has seen daily volumes of up to around 1.7 billion US dollars - around 250 times what it was before the conflict began. Open interest across all HIP-3 markets exceeded USD 1.2 billion, with only 7 of the 30 largest markets being crypto pairs. Commodities and equity indices accounted for the rest.
This is arguably the most compelling real-world use case for on-chain derivatives to date and a clear signal that 24/7 permissionless markets are no longer a theoretical value proposition.
