Nvidia has been making headlines for more than its chips, and traders are responding. Hyperliquid’s Nvidia perpetual futures contract recorded nearly $2 billion in 24-hour trading volume, making it the platform’s second-largest market after Bitcoin perpetual futures.
What is actually being traded here
Hyperliquid’s NVDA perpetual futures are cash-settled contracts margined in USDC, with up to 20x leverage, and trade around the clock, seven days a week. Traditional equity markets close on weekends, but this contract does not.
The contracts are part of Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 framework, launched around October 2025, which enables third-party developers to create markets in asset classes beyond crypto.
The contracts settle on-chain, keep user assets in custody and make their order books transparent. Hyperliquid’s underlying engine, HyperCore, and its HyperBFT consensus mechanism are designed to match centralized platforms’ speed while maintaining a decentralized architecture.
Bitcoin perpetual futures on the platform recorded about $3 billion in daily volume over the same period, putting NVDA not far behind the top spot. Open interest in the main NVDA perpetual futures market exceeded $500 million.
Why Nvidia, and why now
The rise in NVDA perpetual futures activity coincides with public scrutiny of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, including reports of internal investigations that rattled the stock and triggered significant market volatility. NVDA perpetual futures price moves of between 3% and 10% or more have been recorded in connection with news about the CEO.
The contract’s 24/7 availability matters. When traditional equity markets are closed and news breaks over a weekend, retail traders typically have nowhere to act on it until Monday morning. A perpetual futures contract on a decentralized exchange does not wait for the opening bell.
Hyperliquid’s broader trajectory
Jeff Yan, formerly a quantitative trader at Hudson River Trading, launched Hyperliquid in 2023 with a self-funded team. On November 29, 2024, the platform held a major HYPE token airdrop, distributing 310 million tokens, equal to 31% of the maximum supply of one billion.
Introduced around October 2025, the HIP-3 framework was the structural change that enabled non-crypto perpetual futures at scale. By letting third parties create and launch markets, Hyperliquid effectively opened up a category historically dominated by centralized exchanges: leveraged access to traditional financial assets for a global, permissionless user base.
