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Can a token that’s already up 77% in a single year still be cheap? Bitwise thinks so — and the firm is making that case loudly.
What happened
Bitwise has flagged Hyperliquid’s HYPE token as a potentially undervalued asset, even after the token posted a 77% gain so far this year. The firm’s position cuts against the usual instinct to chase what’s already moved or ignore what hasn’t pulled back. Instead, Bitwise is basically arguing that price appreciation alone doesn’t close the gap between where a token trades and what it’s actually worth. It’s a bold read in a market that tends to reward momentum chasers and punish anyone who tries to think two steps ahead. Whether or not you buy the thesis, it’s reignited a real debate about how crypto assets get valued — and whether the tools investors use are even built for this kind of market.
The historical context
Bitwise’s read on HYPE isn’t without precedent. Crypto has a long history of assets that looked expensive on the surface but turned out to be dramatically mispriced relative to their eventual impact.
Ethereum is the obvious example. Back in 2017, it was pretty much an afterthought next to Bitcoin — a niche platform that most traders dismissed. Then developers started building on it, decentralized applications started gaining users, and the narrative flipped hard. The market had been slow to price in the utility. Chainlink went through something similar. For a long time it was viewed as an obscure infrastructure play, the kind of thing only protocol nerds cared about. Then the broader market figured out that connecting smart contracts to real-world data was actually a foundational need, and the valuation followed. In both cases, the initial skepticism wasn’t irrational — it just turned out to be wrong. The technology moved faster than the consensus did. Bitwise seems to think HYPE is in that same early window, where adoption and utility haven’t yet fully shown up in the price.
Why it matters
The stakes here go beyond one token. If Bitwise is right, it says something uncomfortable about how the market prices digital assets in general — that even a 77% rally can leave a token undervalued if the underlying fundamentals are strong enough and the broader market hasn’t caught on yet.
That’s a challenge to a lot of conventional thinking. Most investors treat a big run-up as a reason to wait for a pullback, not a reason to dig deeper. But Bitwise is pushing back on that reflex. The firm seems to think the market is still anchored too heavily to price momentum and not enough to utility, adoption trajectory, and competitive positioning.
For investors, the practical implication is real. Those willing to do the work — looking past the recent chart to what Hyperliquid is actually building and where it sits competitively — could find themselves ahead of a revaluation. Those who stick to surface-level metrics probably won’t.
And it’s not just about HYPE. A Bitwise endorsement like this tends to pull attention toward the broader category of under-the-radar tokens that haven’t yet attracted institutional coverage. That kind of spotlight can shift portfolio behavior across the market, probably increasing volatility in smaller-cap names as more capital starts hunting for the next overlooked asset.
What to watch
Trading volume on HYPE over the next stretch is worth watching closely. A sustained uptick — not a one-day spike — would suggest the Bitwise view is gaining traction with actual buyers, not just generating headlines.
Hyperliquid’s own development pipeline matters too. New partnerships, protocol upgrades, or meaningful adoption milestones would give the undervaluation thesis something concrete to lean on. Without that, it stays an interesting argument rather than a confirmed trend.
Bitwise’s next moves are also worth tracking. If the firm doubles down or expands its coverage of similar assets, that’s a signal about where it sees the next wave of opportunity. If it quietly walks back the HYPE call, that tells a different story.
The broader tension Bitwise is poking at is real and it’s not going away. Crypto markets run on narratives, and narratives tend to lag reality — sometimes by months, sometimes by years. Tokens can sit in a strange middle zone where they’ve moved a lot but still haven’t been fully discovered by the capital that would actually reprice them. HYPE, at 77% up on the year and still called undervalued by a firm like Bitwise, is sitting squarely in that zone right now.
Whether the market agrees is another question entirely. Unclear when that answer arrives.
