The State of Crypto (August 2 2026)
I've been trading crypto and active on crypto twitter since 2017. This morning I went through my following list and saw many accounts went dark without a good bye or any type of conclusion to their journey. The common denominator I saw was expectations of $BTC reclaiming 100K and moving to new all time highs, something I've been personally vocal against for a long time now. Here we are nearly a year later and things only look worse. Many have given up.
It's important to remember that crypto is just another vehicle to make money.. like stocks, commodities, forex, etc. Crypto has other use cases as well, but those don't make the price go up. People's desire to make money coupled with mass attention is what makes the price go up. And it's currently difficult for crypto to garner attention because AI stocks trade with the volatility of altcoins, so all of the attention is on them. And with stocks, there's no VPN required, no bridging required. There's no need to understand addresses or wallets or anything to prevent people from buying. With stocks, you open your phone and you're buying within minutes. So why would market participants jump through so many hoops just to trade inferior assets? And one of the greatest allures of stocks is that you can be wrong on your trade, but know that you're still holding a great company. When you're wrong with crypto, you're typically holding vapor that trends to zero.
With all those negatives said, the crypto community is still very strong, no doubt. A lot of us grew up here and witnessed people go from nothing to "making it" within this space. But I'd argue that current conditions are difficult and you truly need a high level of skill and a repeatable edge to be profitable. This is different than past years. Before 2017 you could throw shit at the wall in crypto and become a millionaire. Then you had the COVID bull run and all the cycles it brought. Altcoins, NFTs, memes.. you simply didn't need a high level of skill to be profitable during these times. But times have changed.
The reality is you're late to the party by now. Crypto controlled the mainstream for years until AI recently took over. Saylor came, the ETFs came, EVERYBODY already came and prices peaked. That's in the past now and what you're currently left with is a #Bitcoin that is basically less volatile than the S&P 500. Crypto majors are slowly bleeding and even the memes within crypto are eclipsed by the volatility of semi-conductor stocks on a daily basis. Even crypto exchanges saw the writing on the wall in 2026 as they all started implementing equities onto their platforms. Tether invests in gold rather than crypto. From financial products to investments, even crypto natives are shifting away from crypto.
So where is the silver lining? It's truly difficult to see one right now. Crypto has essentially become the new forex. It's a niche sector of tradable assets filled with market participants who didn't move on to the new exciting game in town (AI). Trump used crypto to enrich his family, friends, and businesses and sends a once monthly headline about America being #1 in crypto that comes across more like a paid tweet than intention for genuine progress. Saylor is down $10+ billion over a period where the S&P 500 has tripled along with every other asset in the world, from housing to fruit to toilet paper. He was just approved to sell 5 billion worth of Bitcoin here at $63,000 per coin after his endless buying spree at over $100,000 per coin. He's more pompous and arrogant than intelligent and has zero ability to execute well timed Bitcoin purchases. It's beyond laughable to think that Strategy is going to engage in "active capital management" moving forward. Saylor is now a sideliner hoping the market saves him while begging for the Clarity Act to be passed on Twitter. Tom Lee casts a dark shadow over $ETH, a fool no different than Saylor. $SOL is priced best to be bought back up if the masses return, but it just distributed for two years and recently broke down. $HYPE could have been the golden goose that escaped the crypto ecosystem but talks of KYC and regulation have stifled its bull run. No different than how Binance and BitMex gave users to Bybit and then Bybit gave its users to Blofin. Regulation slowly kills exchanges.
The true silver lining is knowing that the trading skills you've spent years developing in crypto can be applied to other markets as well. And if you were a flash in the pan, then I hope you retired off of your niche cycle because those were likely once in a lifetime opportunities.
With all this said, I genuinely do hope there is a catalyst that allows crypto to flourish once again, even if it never reaches its former peak. And while I can envision lower prices, I have to think that we're near max pain when it comes to volatility and trading opportunity. I have to imagine that price action gets better going into the end of the year and beyond. A deep move lower could partially remove Saylor from the market and we could have a run, a run that both spot buyers and traders alike could enjoy. I think a logical bounce / bull case for Bitcoin could put us back near $100,000, in which we would need to see prices at $50,000 or less to aim for a 2x. For altcoins like ETH and SOL, I presume they will simply follow Bitcoin. HYPE could still outperform if it's not regulated to death and I'm sure some memes can run in between. My last ten trades in a row have all been equity trades because that's where the volatility has been, but I truly hope that changes soon. I have nothing against crypto. In fact, I love crypto. It gave me a career and an audience and skills that I may not have developed otherwise. I'm nothing but thankful for crypto and I wish it was in a better state.
But the reality is that all good things do wind down. They don't fully die, but they're never what they once were. I can still play Counter Strike 1.6, which I absolutely lived for in my teenage years, but it's not the same. It's not a LAN party with the boys or scrimming for 14 hours straight on a Saturday. Pick your favorite pastime and you can still find others flourishing and enjoying life within the niche, but the golden years are behind us.
There's a lot of talk about crypto's return to glory lately, but everything grows older, and it may never look like it once did. And that's okay.
The President of the United States personally extracted $1.1B across WLFI and his memecoins (not including what his friends and family made) while delivering nothing and giving people false expectations.
He never cared one bit about crypto. Everything he promised and did was solely to enrich himself, and it worked.
This is the reason we’re where we are today. Crypto has become a place where you can milk the shit out of people and get away with it, no matter how much crime you commit.
Dear users,
We've been hard at work expanding our product suite and building an integrated, user-friendly experience across the Hyperliquid ecosystem. The Hfun Bot was our first step, a fun and simple way to trade with your friends. Building more mature, polished products takes time, but we're committed to our long-term vision and will continue delivering on it.
Today, we're excited to launch https://t.co/BnMrpf1bB4, an alternative frontend for Hyperliquid prediction markets. Our goal is to provide a faster, more intuitive, and more engaging experience than the current native Hyperliquid interface.
We hope you enjoy it, and we sincerely appreciate your patience and support as we continue bringing more of our vision fully on-chain.
gl, hfun
Coinbase is now the official deployer of @HyperliquidX's USDC treasury wallet.
We will be activating AQAv2 from the two addresses below:
0x4E5319dEb1072B01439EE674db5C321d11fd96F8
0xc20699185c15D0a2fD65779BB5d69f5b0B113c00
Hey Dave -- I think you should consider buying a token that has actual revenues associated with it. $HYPE makes $1 billion in free cash flow per year, all of which is used to buy back the token. There is a reason it has far outperformed every other coin. The image below is its fees generated from today alone
Hyperliquid is an all-in-one trading platform where you can trade stocks, crypto, commodities, and more. It is decentralized and all transactions are transparent. The founder decided to build Hyperliquid after the FTX collapse in 2022. As a user, no one has access to your coins other than yourself. It uses actual blockchain and smart contract technology the way it was supposed to be used and there is a real business behind it
The founding team is only 11 people, making them the most profitable company per employee in the world. Yet even still, all revenue is funneled back into buying back the token (and burning it). They have bought back around 15% of the supply in the last year alone
The founder is a computer science olympiad and previously ran one of the most successful high frequency trading firms in the world
It is the only coin in crypto to ever find this kind of product market fit and produce real, sustainable revenue. They also raised no money from VCs, so there is no one to endlessly dump on you like most coins
Over 50% of volumes now come from people trading non-crypto assets like stocks and commodities. For example, you can even long $SPCX or $QNT right now, before they IPO. The adoption of trading real world assets has allowed it to largely decouple from the rest of crypto (see its performance vs. $BTC this year).
Happy to discuss more / send you some good research if you'd like!
We welcome today’s CFTC actions: approval of the first U.S.-listed perpetual derivatives contract, an accompanying Commission policy statement on the listing of perpetual derivatives, related interpretive guidance and no-action relief from the Market Participants Division, and a Staff Advisory on 24/7 Trading, Clearing, and Settlement, as a long-overdue acknowledgment that perpetual derivatives are a legitimate and essential tool for price discovery and risk management.
For too long, regulatory ambiguity drove these markets offshore, depriving American traders and institutions of access to regulated venues and undermining U.S. competitiveness in the global derivatives markets.
Today’s actions chart a new path forward. We look forward to engaging closely with the Commission to ensure that the framework it develops is workable not only for centralized intermediaries, but for the onchain protocols where the most significant perpetuals activity actually occurs.
Spot hyperliquid:native ETFs have absorbed 1.04% of HYPE's market cap in their first 10 trading days
Strongest debut of any spot crypto ETF to date
HYPE: 1.04%
BTC: 0.59%
ETH: 0.41%
SOL: 0.31%
(new-issuer cohort, GBTC/ETHE outflows stripped due to them being legacy trust products)
2026 is the year Hyperliquid crosses the chasm in the adoption life cycle:
→ RWA perps have hit mainstream news repeatedly (Pre-IPO perps next catalyst)
→ World Cup HIP-4 market is the first move to onboard next wave of users
→ ETF inflows show strong TradFi demand for HYPE
NEW: @Grayscale submits another Hyperliquid ETF filing! This one is amendment #3. Ticker will be $GHYP when it launches. Have to assume we are getting closer to a launch where we'll have three hyperliquid:native ETFs on U.S. exchanges
Prev ATH buy pressure:
$1-2m a day from AF
New ATH buy pressure :
$1-2m a day from AF
~$3m per day from Purr
~$7m a day from ETFs
~$400k a day from AQA
Not sure what call sellers seeing that I’m missing. Pretty thin asset still
The HYPE brothers $THYP & $BHYP saw another massive jump in volume, approaching $100m between them, after going up another 9% today, 42% since launch on 5/12.
hyperliquid:native ETF launches are already seeing strong demand.
What happens when the ETF issuers still on the sidelines realize they need to launch theirs before they fall behind and miss one of the best on-chain assets available?
I genuinely don’t think the market has priced in what’s coming from the ETF demand side.
The Assistance Fund and Coinbase/Circle buybacks matter, but recent ETF flows are operating on an entirely different scale.