U.S. regulators\u2019 180-degree pivot from scrutinizing crypto to embracing it has resulted in a flurry of new activations in 2025, and now Coinbase, the largest centralized exchange (CEX) in the country, has entered the perpetual futures market, leaving onchain natives wondering if it will impact Hyperliquid, the DeFi darling of this market cycle.<\/p>\n
Coinbase Perpetuals, which launched on July 21<\/a>, marks a major milestone for perpetual futures trading in the United States and comes less than a week after Kraken launched its own perpetuals offering in select U.S. territories.<\/p>\n Prior to Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) chair Mersinger\u2019s unofficial endorsement<\/a> of perpetual trading in the United States, most activity was conducted offshore, or on decentralized exchanges (DEXs) such as Hyperliquid. While Hyperliquid is technically not available to U.S. residents, it is presumed that most users circumvent the geoblock through a VPN, as the DEX does not require know-your-customer (KYC) verification. <\/p>\n Now, with perpetuals green-lit in the United States via CEXs such as Coinbase and Kraken Pro, many traders are debating whether this spells trouble for Hyperliquid\u2019s dominant market share.<\/p>\n While Hyperliquid has grown significantly over the last year, it remains relatively small compared to Binance, the leading derivatives trading platform. Over the last 24 hours, Binance has processed $128 billion<\/a> in perpetual futures volume, with $39 billion in open interest. Meanwhile, Hyperliquid has recorded just $17 billion<\/a> with $14 billion in open interest. <\/p>\n Historically, CEXs have dominated their decentralized alternatives as traders\u2019 preferred venues, but Hyperliquid has established itself as potentially the most successful DEX iteration yet, and some analysts believe that Coinbase\u2019s foray into perpetuals will not harm Hyperliquid\u2019s market share, and potentially bolster it.<\/p>\n \u201cCoinbase perps is net bullish for Hyperliquid. Power users will eventually want composability, low fees and non-KYC. Eventually, they\u2019ll funnel into Hyperliquid. On the other end, I don’t think we see leakage within Hyperliquid\u2019s core users towards a more centralized venue. Coinbase will do all the user acquisition, and without a VPN blocker, the right people will find their way onchain eventually,\u201d wrote<\/a> Messari researcher Sunny Shi on X after Coinbase perpetuals were originally announced in June.<\/p>\n Hyperliquid, which launched in 2023, has become the go-to onchain perpetuals platform and is regularly among the Top 10 volume generators for high-demand assets such as BTC and ETH. The platform\u2019s perpetual and spot volumes have been in a consistent uptrend since the launch of its HYPE token in November 2024.<\/p>\n The DEX boasts deep liquidity, which has been a pain point for previous DEX iterations as it caps trade sizes due to price slippage. Hyperliquid\u2019s order books, on the other hand, have handled billion-dollar trades<\/a> without a hitch.<\/p>\n Hyperliquid also benefits from the reputational boost it received from its substantial airdrop, which distributed 30% of the HYPE token supply \u2014 now worth almost $15 billion \u2014 to its early users. The wealth generation event has left many users who missed the first airdrop foaming at the mouth and speculating on a future second HYPE airdrop.<\/p>\n The exchange has averaged roughly $200 billion in monthly perpetuals volume in 2025, hitting an all-time high of $249 billion in May. The second-largest decentralized competitor is Jupiter, a Solana-based DEX, which has processed between $17 billion and $36 billion<\/a> in monthly volume.<\/p>\n While leading centralized exchanges such as Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken still command the lion\u2019s share of spot markets, Hyperliquid is slowly gaining on the competition, as showcased by the platform\u2019s domination of the spot PUMP trading market<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the first 24 hours of trading, Hyperliquid processed nearly $185 million of spot PUMP trades, while Bybit and MEXC traded roughly $160 million each. The only centralized exchange to outperform Hyperliquid on the opening day was Gate, with $267 million of spot volume.<\/p>\n Neither Binance nor Coinbase had a horse in the race, but Hyperliquid\u2019s market share<\/a> of spot trading volume on a token as highly anticipated as PUMP sparked renewed belief in the DEX\u2019s vision of replacing CEXs.<\/p>\n DeFi bulls remain convinced that Coinbase\u2019s perpetuals launch will have little to no effect on Hyperliquid, with many citing Coinbase\u2019s NFT platform<\/a> launch in 2022, which was widely expected to unseat Opensea, the leading NFT marketplace at the time. <\/p>\n However, the platform struggled to gain traction and recorded fewer than 200 transactions on its opening day, failing to compete with legacy on-chain platforms.<\/p>\n Notwithstanding the harsh comparison, there are pros and cons to centralized perpetual trading on a significant scale. In decentralized solutions, all trading positions are publicly accessible and transparent, which potentially promotes \u201cstop-hunting\u201d and manipulation tactics. <\/p>\n Stop-hunting is a practice observed across markets, where well-funded entities or groups of users attempt to manipulate the price of an asset to trigger a large position\u2019s stop-loss, thereby forcing the exit of the position. On a large enough scale, this can trigger short or long squeezes in the markets in an unnatural, yet fair, manner.<\/p>\nHyperliquid Dominates DEXs<\/h2>\n
![\"Hyperliquid](\"https:\/\/thedefiant.io\/_next\/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.thedefiant.io%2Fad_4nxecyy-axpwzzimrr_x04a-nb-1bbqg6z2klcnseudgt4by1g57uopo0-cc720cde-4e66-42ef-8342-5051c825daaf.png&w=2048&q=100\"\/)
Hyperliquid Spot Trading<\/h2>\n
Coinbase NFT Moment?<\/h2>\n