Ark Invest is skeptical that Hyperliquid can fulfill its “house of all finance” vision, pointing to the platform’s limited decentralization, partially anonymous team and minimal spot trading despite growing activity. Lorenzo Valente, head of crypto research at Ark Invest, said a U.S. route through Kraken would likely require liquidity to be separated from Hyperliquid’s permissionless market, potentially creating an inferior product similar to the distinction between Binance and Binance US. In August, Valente had recommended that Hyperliquid pause buybacks and acquire Gemini for U.S. expansion, with U.S. users ring-fenced under a structure similar to Kraken’s plan. HyperCore supports perpetual futures and spot order books, but spot volume was about $271 million in the past 24 hours, compared with $12 billion in perpetuals volume and $16 billion in open interest. Hyperliquid’s Layer 2 has about 27 validators, versus roughly 900 on Solana and more than 900,000 on Ethereum. The platform has nevertheless expanded beyond crypto perpetuals through prediction markets via HIP-4, real-world asset perpetuals and native borrowing, which launched in September and had processed more than $340 million in borrowed assets as of writing. An a16z report said real-world asset perpetuals grew 44-fold this year to more than $117 billion in volume, with decentralized exchanges led by Hyperliquid accounting for 86% of the market versus 14% for centralized exchanges. Whether these markets generate enough revenue and buybacks to support HYPE’s value remains uncertain.