Ok I wasn't gonna get into this because it'd be contrarian and unpopular but here we go.
First off - I'm not denying HYPE is 💯 one of the most impressive projects out there. None of the below is a comment on HYPE's fundamentals as a business. It's only an objective assessment of its price trajectory.
I don't think HYPE is undervalued AT ALL. In fact, I see its price plateauing less than 2x from here - to be generous - for the below reasons:
1/
3x potential sell pressure from its 75% unvested token: when you are talking about overhang, you are talking about sell pressure, regardless of whether it comes from the team selling or VC selling. Indeed there's no VC overhang but can you say with 100% confidence that the HYPE team isn't selling their tokens in the next couple years?
2/
Let's look at comps for a sanity check:
ATH of CME = $118B, ~3× HYPE's FDV today
ICE = $107B, ~2.5x
Nasdaq = $57B ~1.5×
For a HYPE buyer today to get a 2×, they need to assume:
- Either the HYPE team does not sell forever, or there's 8x marginal buying from today to absorb the 4x sell pressure (for a 2x net price) from HYPE team vesting/selling in the future. It could land somewhere in between.
- HYPE eclipses Nasdaq and closes in on CME's ATH — the world's largest derivatives marketplace, processing over $1 quadrillion in notional volume annually, with a 130-year regulatory moat.
3/
So who are the buyers? The two sides are retail vs. institutional.
RE retail: What will be the net-new "secret" or "alpha" to trigger the buy when literally everyone and their grandma knows HYPE is the posterchild of crypto? You might have some on the sidelines but how big?
RE institutional - this one could move the needle. Two types of institutional buyers here could be:
a. Web2 hedge funds or mutual funds
b. Crypto hedge funds
For a), I highly doubt web2 hedge funds would touch HYPE - cuz it's illicit. KYC-less setup and regulatory arbitrage are features for HYPE's blitzscaling - but is that something endowments and mutual funds can get comfortable underwriting?
You could argue PURR is the way - that's up to their risk tolerance and I cant comment here.
Even if the web2 mutual funds and endowment buy, what do you think these wall street veteran would comp HYPE to? It'd be Nasdaq (1.5x HYPE at its ATH) and - by a long stretch - CME (less than 3x HYPE at its ATH).
For b), ask your KOL hedge fund managers on CT - when HYPE gets to $80B, will they continue to hold? Even if they want to hold, they'd need to sell some to meet their fiduciary duty because expecting HYPE, an illicit perp exchange, to be more valuable than CME with 130 years of regulatory & lindy moat would make them look delusional to LPs.
So... tell me, where are these marginal buyers coming from? And we need A LOT of them.
4/
Between Lazarus Group, Mythos-equivalent AI hack capabilities to come - if someone were to target crypto, where do you think the biggest honeypot is?
5/
Let's not even talk about the key man risks here...
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