Hyperliquid’s HYPE token was trading near $81.25 at 12:20 p.m. UTC on Saturday, Aug. 29, after falling about 2.3% in 24 hours. The decline followed a record high of roughly $86.71 on Aug. 27, 2026, the date of the project’s largest scheduled token unlock since launch. About 14.18 million HYPE tokens, worth roughly $1.2 billion at current prices, are scheduled to enter circulation, representing about 1.4% of the 1 billion maximum supply and nearly 2.7% of market capitalization. HYPE remains among the 10 largest crypto assets by market value, with capitalization near $18.1 billion and 24-hour trading volume above $1.25 billion, according to CoinGecko data. The release is testing whether treasury buying, staking, buybacks and regulatory optimism can absorb the new supply. Hyperliquid is a performance-focused Layer 1 blockchain built around an on-chain perpetual futures exchange, with an expanding HyperEVM environment, prediction markets and tokenized assets. Nasdaq-listed Hyperliquid Strategies has increased its HYPE treasury to about 29.3 million tokens after raising hundreds of millions of dollars in equity this year. Reports also said Bitwise’s Hyperliquid ETF has been staking a large HYPE position, while on-chain data showed sizable exchange withdrawals into staking. Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework is designed to direct most yield from billions of dollars in USDC reserves into programmatic HYPE buybacks and burns, with its first execution window set for early October. President Trump said CFTC Chair Michael Selig was working on a compliant U.S. path for Hyperliquid, while the Hyperliquid Policy Center has urged the CFTC and SEC to consider on-chain perpetuals as a risk-management tool and develop frameworks for pre-IPO and commodity-linked contracts. No U.S. retail launch has been approved. The near-term market direction will depend on whether unlocked tokens are sold, staked or absorbed by treasuries and ETFs.