Call-buying bonanza around Trump's Hyperliquid comments includes some eyebrow-raising trades

Wednesday was already shaping up to be the best for crypto assets in recent memory, with bitcoin trading the highest since June as President Donald Trump scheduled a meeting with industry leaders.

Then the big news hit.

Around 3 p.m. ET, the president hinted at regulating Hyperliquid, the decentralized exchange owned by publicly traded Hyperliquid Strategies (PURR) that’s been garnering popularity among traders as the home base of “perpetual futures” trading – the swap-like derivatives contracts with high leverage and no expiration that have been a thorn in the side of incumbent exchanges this year – despite U.S. residents not being allowed on the platform.

“I understand that [Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair] Mike [Selig] is also working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States in a fully compliant and legal fashion,” Trump said in a press conference.

Shares of Hyperliquid surged 30% before the closing bell, bringing the stock’s year-to-date gain to more than 163%. HYPE, the digital token that powers the exchange’s blockchain-based settlement and operations, jumped 18% to just below record highs. Shares of Cboe Global Markets dropped 3.5%, Miami International Holdings fell 3.1% and CME Group slid 1.7%.

“We’ve been trying for awhile to figure out how to get into the U.S. and the CFTC has been quite responsive, but when Trump says it at a press conference, it means it’s a priority,” David Schamis, CEO of Hyperliquid Strategies and founding partner at Atlas Merchant Capital, said in a call after the bell on Wednesday.

“You can’t do something like this and make new rules – you see how hard it is to get Clarity [Act] passed. You have to figure out how to make it work with rules existing today,” he added. The Clarity Act is a bill that would establish a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies.

Options volume in Hyperliquid was almost eight times the 30-day average, with more than 120,000 calls traded versus under 8,000 puts. Traders bought almost 45,000 calls and sold 29,000. About $10 million in premium exchanged hands, with the biggest single trades coming about a half-hour after the announcement when someone bought 2,000 8-strike calls expiring in November and December for about $510,000.

There was also a flurry of heavy call-trading activity in the hours before the announcement. Just shy of $2 million in calls of various strikes and expiries traded before 3 p.m., including some trades that carried signs of indiscriminate and rushed buying indicative of someone eager to get in on a trade.

In one case, around 11 a.m., someone spent $65,000 trading 719 of the 8-strike calls expiring in mid-October, paying 90 cents each for a contract that had just 67 open positions coming into Wednesday. Those calls are now worth $2.45 each, meaning the trader was up about $111,000 by the close.

“These by definition were opening trades so you’re asking me to believe someone went out in front of this announcement and sold a bunch of upside call opening trades?” said Dennis Davitt, CNBC contributor and co-founder of Millbank Dartmoor Portsmouth, an investment firm managing more than $500 million in institutional assets. “I hope they have a robust alibi.”

Trading in the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) was more than 4.5 times the 30-day average even before the Hyperliquid headlines as Treasury yields retreated, and investors overall pivoted toward underperforming sectors of the past year. Bitcoin volatility measured by Volmex Labs’ BVIV Index jumped 13% after hitting a year-to-date low of 35.5 Friday.

Whether Hyperliquid’s success translates into a bitcoin price revival remains to be seen. Shares of Michael Saylor’s Strategy rallied nearly 13% Wednesday, while Coinbase surged almost 10%. Both are down roughly 30% year-to-date after bitcoin posted the worst year relative to the S&P 500 since 2019

“We have four things on our balance sheet,” said Schamis. “Two billion of HYPE token, cash, common equity, and deferred tax liability. No debt and no funky converts.”