According to Arthur Hayes, co-founder of Bitmex exchange and CIO of Maelstrom Fund, the pressure in the prediction markets of leading decentralized exchange HyperLiquid is about who catches the upside, not just the cheapest trade.
CoinDesk previously reported that Hyperliquid is creating a zero-fee-to-open model for event trading under HIP-4. Hyperliquid Improvement Proposal (HIP)-4 is a proposal that introduces event trading on Hyperliquid.
Hayes said the structure is only the first layer. In a note to CoinDesk, he argued that the real differentiator is HYPE, Hyperliquid’s exchange token, which he said allows users to benefit from platform activity in a way Polymarket and Kalashi currently do not.
“HIP-4 will quickly become a major prediction market due to Hyperliquid’s large user base, very affordable trading fees, and very strong technical infrastructure,” Hayes told CoinDesk. “Users who hold $HYPE tokens can directly benefit from the use of HIP-4.”
Polymarket is expected to launch a token, often referred to as $POLY.
At the gate, premarket perpetual contracts tied to potential $POLY tokens are trading around $14, implying a fully diluted valuation of approximately $14 billion. By comparison, HYPE’s FDV is around $38 billion, according to data from CoinGecko.
Pre-listing markets are often highly speculative and may be thinly traded, meaning that any implied valuation should be treated with caution and may not reliably reflect actual market demand.
This argument also applies to geography. Polymarket registered with the CFTC last July and is rebuilding its US business with compliance at the center of its strategy.
However, in Asia, it is still struggling with how regulators classify its product. It is geoblocked in Singapore, Thailand and Taiwan, and partially restricted in Japan. Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, prediction markets are more widely on the radar of gambling regulators.
Hyperliquid faces no similar hurdles, and its user base skews toward Asia, where crypto-native trading is already deep.
The contrast with Kalashi is most obvious.
As a CFTC-regulated exchange, Kalshi’s model is built around compliance and licensing, not token incentives, potentially ruling out the type of value-accumulation layer pointed out by Hayes.
This makes it the most direct test of his thesis. Users can trade event results on Kalshi, but they have no way to access the platform. In traditional markets, such raises are typically achieved through equity offerings, such as IPOs, however for now, Kalshi users’ participation is limited to trading on the platform.
Among all three platforms, the split is structural: Hyperliquid already adds the use of a token, Polymarket is moving in that direction, and Kalshi’s model potentially prevents it altogether.