No Fundraising, No Real Estate Purchases, Denies Being an Exchange: The Restraint and Expansion of Hyperliquid’s Founder

Written by: Ryan Weeks, Bloomberg

Translated by: Saoirse, Foresight News

Hyperliquid founder Jeff Yan, photographed at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington

I made a special trip to Washington, D.C., to speak with Jeff Yan and learn about the future strategic plans for Hyperliquid, the fast-growing crypto platform he built. We sat down at the ground-floor café of the stately Riggs Hotel, with his security team on standby nearby. As we talked, I realized this 31-year-old founder might not give straight, definitive answers.

The programmer, whose valuation sits in the billion-dollar range, is well-versed in crypto industry rhetoric. While the outside world generally defines Hyperliquid as a digital asset exchange, he consistently emphasizes that Hyperliquid itself is not an exchange, but rather the "underlying infrastructure layer that hosts exchanges." He likens it to the internet: developers building applications on top of Hyperliquid need to design their own risk management and checks-and-balances mechanisms. Jeff Yan prefers not to talk big about industry visions but focuses on coding. "I spend almost all my time working," he said. "For me, work takes up all my energy."

This dedication has yielded significant results: Hyperliquid started as a small offshore platform specializing in perpetual contracts (Perps), which are continuously traded around the clock with no expiration dates. Today, it has grown into a core trading market supporting proxy contract trading for various assets like stocks and gold, generating $713 million in revenue over the past 12 months.

Launched in 2023, Hyperliquid has not opened to the U.S. market, yet its growth momentum has shaken industry heavyweights, including the world's largest derivatives exchange, CME Group, and even caught the attention of the White House. Donald Trump, a supporter of the crypto industry, generated over $1.4 billion in profit from his own crypto project last year, and he previously stated that regulators are fully researching the regulatory framework for perpetual contracts. Based out of Singapore, Jeff Yan traveled to Washington this time to support the Hyperliquid Policy Center. This independent lobbying entity continually submits documents to U.S. regulators explaining the platform's value.

Hyperliquid founder Jeff Yan, photographed in Washington. Photographer: Greg Kahn, Bloomberg Businessweek

The café where we interviewed him is a niche gathering spot for the crypto industry. On the way to our seats, we saw two women deeply discussing stablecoins. Jeff Yan said this trip was to meet with policymakers, but declined to reveal their identities. Dressed in a dark suit and tie, fitting the corporate-political style of Washington rather than the T-shirts and hoodies he usually wears while coding, he appeared sharp and spoke cautiously. When discussing the project that elevated him into the billion-dollar bracket, his attitude was sincere and wryly humorous.

Precisely calculating his assets is no easy task. Public information shows that current and future "core contributors" of Hyperliquid (almost certainly including Jeff Yan) hold at least 238 million of the platform's native HYPE tokens, worth approximately $20 billion. When asked about his net worth, Jeff Yan did not directly answer: "That is not the goal I am pursuing." He shows no interest in the material comforts that immense wealth can bring. He owns no cars and no real estate, openly admitting he lacks the time to manage acquisitions.

Jeff Yan grew up in Redwood Shores, California, raised by his mother, a CPA who immigrated from China to the U.S. He studied mathematics and computer science at Harvard University before joining Hudson River Trading, a New York-based quantitative trading firm. Less than a year after starting, he chose to strike out on his own. Initially drawn to Ethereum—the underlying blockchain powering many mainstream crypto applications—he ultimately determined that Ethereum was not suited to the product he wanted to build.

In 2024, Jeff Yan established the platform's development entity in Singapore, where the regulatory environment is more favorable than in the U.S. At that time, perpetual contracts had already become mainstream in crypto trading, but most trading was concentrated on exchanges operating like traditional companies. Decentralized finance, which hands control over to self-executing smart contracts, represented another path, but was then limited in scale and plagued by vulnerabilities. Jeff Yan wanted to change this. From the project's inception, he bypassed the venture capital funding commonly relied upon by peers. While bootstrapping is harder, he deemed it crucial: this neutral technology layer should have no privileged insider investors. "If Satoshi Nakamoto had conducted a Series A funding round with institutions, Bitcoin would not be what it is today. That is the logic."

He co-founded the company with a partner using the alias Iliensinc. Many Hyperliquid developers and third-party ecosystem partners also chose anonymity. Partly for security reasons: blockchain security firm CertiK reported 52 hacking incidents targeting crypto asset holders in the first half of 2026, which explains why Jeff Yan had discreet security during the interview. Partly due to philosophical alignment, as many in crypto believe privacy is inviolable. Jeff Yan stated that, in principle, anonymity is "highly reasonable for me." However, to push Hyperliquid forward, he ultimately chose to go public. Reflecting on his reasoning at the time: "If no one were continuously promoting the project from its inception, it would be very hard to succeed."

At its core, Hyperliquid consists of a blockchain plus a decentralized exchange, with perpetual contracts supporting up to 50x leverage, amplifying both gains and losses. For traders, this business carries high risks: positions are automatically liquidated during sharp price swings. During a downturn in October 2025, approximately $19 billion in assets across the market were liquidated. According to data from Event Horizon Labs, less than a quarter of accounts on Hyperliquid were profitable.

Even so, Hyperliquid maintains a steady user base among crypto traders, many of whom are HYPE token holders. While most tokens faced price declines this year, HYPE doubled in price. (Binance's hack last week further weakened the crypto market, exposing the inherent risks of such assets.) But what truly brought Hyperliquid to the attention of traditional finance is its recent expansion into stocks and commodities.

The shift began with last year's launch of the HIP-3 upgrade: anyone who locks up 500,000 HYPE tokens (currently worth roughly $43 million) can use Hyperliquid's trading infrastructure to create new markets. The platform handles underlying processes like order matching and clearing. After the upgrade, the ecosystem expanded rapidly. Trade.xyz became the core operator of HIP-3 markets, launching index, precious metals, crude oil, and stock perpetual contracts, with trading volumes already reaching hundreds of billions of dollars.

Theoretically, this trading growth does not include U.S. traders. Jeff Yan states that the viable path to entering the world's largest financial market lies with HIP-3 partners, not Hyperliquid itself, accepting U.S. regulation and implementing compliance requirements like KYC and market surveillance. (This is the core logic behind his argument that "we only provide a technology platform, not an exchange.") In September, Hyperliquid began testing a revised HIP-3 framework, adding identity verification functions to fill in previously missing basic due diligence steps. That same month, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken initiated talks to integrate this system and offer Hyperliquid perpetual contracts to U.S. users.

Yan traveled from Singapore to Washington for the interview. Photographer: Greg Kahn, Bloomberg Businessweek

Notably, the trading volume of real-world assets (RWAs) on Hyperliquid now rivals that of native crypto assets: RWAs alone exceeded $115 billion in July. These trades excel in geopolitical conflict scenarios, unconstrained by traditional trading hours. When tensions flared in Iran in February, traditional crude oil markets closed, but Hyperliquid continued normal operations, with daily trading volume for its crude oil perpetual contracts rapidly surging into the billions.

Following the incident, CME Group and ICE, operators of major global commodity exchanges, pressured U.S. regulators to crack down on Hyperliquid, claiming the platform harbors risks of spoofing and price manipulation. Yet these industry giants are simultaneously positioning for partnerships: ICE recently announced that once regulatory approval is granted, it will launch Trade.xyz perpetual contract products for the U.S. market and invest in the startup. Jeff Yan remarked: "In the coming years, institutions that currently view Hyperliquid as a rival may gradually come to accept that this technology can also serve them."

Of course, some U.S. traders have accessed Hyperliquid via VPN. Jeff Yan clarified that the terms of service for the platform and apps built on it explicitly prohibit U.S. users, and corresponding blocking mechanisms have been set up. But he reiterated that Hyperliquid operates as a neutral protocol. Underlying internet technologies do not block users from accessing content prohibited by their national laws; "this type of enforcement responsibility should fall on the upper-layer applications."

Jeff Yan has been answering my questions for over an hour, yet I still struggle to get clear, definitive conclusions from him. As the project founder, he prefers that this continuously expanding ecosystem prove its own value. Nevertheless, he did share insights into Hyperliquid's next phase of development.

"If I could launch a product from scratch, I think high-quality tokenized real-world assets would be highly attractive." By this, he means that in the long term, Hyperliquid could roll out tokenized trading products for large-cap stocks to users. Proponents argue this model can build markets with superior liquidity compared to traditional stocks. Ultimately, "it's hard to predict," as which products are listed depends largely on third-party developers.

As the interview neared its end, he needed to cross the street to head to the National Portrait Gallery for photoshoots. His team specifically requested that no portraits of sitting or former presidents appear in the background. After all, at its core, Hyperliquid is a neutral protocol.