Arthur Hayes (아서 헤이즈), a co-founder of BitMEX, bought an additional 26,022 Hyperliquid token HYPE worth about $1.1 million, his first purchase in three months.

Data from on-chain tracking account Lookonchain, cited by blockchain outlet BeInCrypto on Saturday, showed the purchase lifted Hayes' total HYPE holdings to 247,334 tokens. The holdings are worth about $10.44 million. The unrealised return was 27.22 percent and the mark-to-market gain was about $2.23 million, it said.

Hayes posted on X, formerly Twitter, saying, "The only thing we're buying right now is HYPE," showing his buying intent. He also kept his earlier forecast that HYPE could reach $150 by August 2026. That is about 266 percent above the current level.

He also pointed to Hyperliquid's revenue structure as a key basis. Hyperliquid uses 97 percent of trading fees to buy HYPE in the open market and burn it. The structure links token value to increased platform use.

Institutional investors have also shown continued interest. Bitwise filed an amended registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, adding ticker symbol BHYP and a management fee of 0.67 percent. Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas said such items typically suggest a fund launch is approaching. Asset manager Grayscale also filed an S-1 last month for the Grayscale HYPE ETF, seeking a Nasdaq listing under the ticker GHYP.

Market conditions are not entirely favourable. HYPE has risen about 176 percent over the past year, according to CoinGecko, showing a strong gain among large tokens, but it fell about 2 percent in the past 24 hours to $40.91. A lack of agreement between the United States and Iran was also cited as a backdrop to the short-term decline.

A slowdown in decentralised exchange market volumes is also a burden. March spot DEX trading volume fell 23.9 percent from the previous month to $212 billion, the lowest since October 2024. DefiLlama data showed monthly perpetual futures DEX volume also fell to $699 billion in March 2026 from $1.369 trillion in October 2025.

Hyperliquid still leads in the perpetual futures segment. But with the decline in trading continuing for a fifth month, whether the fee-based buyback-and-burn structure can maintain its current pace has emerged as a key variable for the second quarter.

The purchase is seen as more than a simple bet by an individual whale, highlighting HYPE's price thesis again as the token-burn structure intersects with expectations tied to exchange-traded fund moves. Still, with trading volume slowing, attention is expected to focus on whether an increase in platform use can translate into actual support for token value.

The only thing we're buying right now is $HYPE