Hyperion Taps Hyperliquid to Turn Token Holdings Into Revenue

Interview with Hyperion DeFi CEO Hyunsoo Jung

Expanding business lines on Hyperliquid

Building diversified revenue streams from token utility

"We have no plan to sell any HYPE"

"South Korea has deep understanding of digital assets...we will broaden engagement"

Hyunsoo Jung, chief executive officer of Hyperion DeFi, outlined a digital asset treasury, or DAT, model designed to generate income by using blockchain ecosystem infrastructure rather than simply holding cryptocurrencies. The company aims to build an institution-grade decentralized finance business on Hyperliquid, a decentralized derivatives exchange.

Hyperion is a Nasdaq-listed company formed after raising $50 million in a private investment in public equity, or PIPE, in June last year and merging with biotech company IONovia. The company is building businesses tied to the Hyperliquid ecosystem and its HYPE token. In the 10 months since launch, it has accumulated about 2 million HYPE, drawing attention in the industry.

In an interview with Bluminbit on April 24, Jung said Hyperion declared itself a Hyperliquid DAT company because of what he described as the token's structural strengths. Ethereum and similar assets are inflationary because supply expands over time, he said. Hyperliquid, by contrast, is deflationary because more tokens are burned each day than are newly issued. He added that Hyperliquid generates $1 million to $2 million of revenue a day and uses 99% of that revenue for token buybacks.

Unlike conventional DAT companies that buy digital assets and hold them in treasury, Hyperion deploys its tokens across five business lines to create diversified income streams. Those include validator fees earned as a top-10 validator with 12 million HYPE in delegated stake, liquid staking income based on options volatility, and a DeFi monetization model that provides liquidity and shares in trading fees in dollars from traditional assets such as gold, silver and oil. The company also lends tokens to market makers through a liquidity service that lowers their fees while sharing in revenue, and it has built an ecosystem rewards model aimed at long-term value creation by acquiring tokens from partner protocols within Hyperliquid.

Jung said investors gain exposure not only to token ownership but also to the benefits of those diversified revenue businesses. The HYPE held by Hyperion functions as core infrastructure, creating continuous revenue pipelines across the ecosystem, he said. Hyperion has no plans to sell any of its HYPE holdings.

The business is already showing financial results. Gross profit rose 87% last quarter from the previous quarter. Based on that performance, Hyperion projects annual revenue of $4 million to $6 million this year. Jung said the net loss recorded on the books reflected the gap between the token purchase price and the market price at the reporting date, making it an accounting figure rather than an operating measure.

Hyperion is also expanding its business in step with Hyperliquid's technology rollout. HIP3, introduced earlier by Hyperliquid, is a technical standard that supports on-chain trading of traditional assets including gold, silver, oil and overseas equities. About half of Hyperliquid's total trading volume now comes from HIP3-based markets, Jung said. Hyperion supplies its HYPE holdings as liquidity to those markets and receives part of market revenue in dollars. That gives the company a diversified income structure that can still generate trading-fee revenue even if the token price declines.

HIP4, which is set to launch after going through Hyperliquid's testnet, is a prediction-market feature that allows users to profit from the outcome of specific events or moves in asset prices. The feature can be used to build on-chain binary options that pay a fixed return when certain conditions are met.

With HIP4, investors could buy a one-time option that pays out if Bitcoin falls below a certain price instead of paying costly funding fees to hedge downside risk, Jung said. He added that Hyperion is also considering new businesses around the feature, which he said could make hedging structures used by traditional financial institutions more efficient.

Jung also gave a positive assessment of South Korea. The country has strong understanding of real-world assets, or RWA, and security token offerings, or STO, and has advanced infrastructure, making it a market with significant opportunity, he said. While South Korea's DeFi regulations are currently strict, he said the market will ultimately move toward blockchain-native environments because of capital efficiency and payment convenience.

He added that once major US institutions begin using on-chain infrastructure in earnest, technology-leading countries such as South Korea will have little choice but to follow. Rather than waiting for the market to open, Hyperion plans to begin meeting South Korean authorities and companies now to assess demand and engage proactively, he said.