Stocks Just Topped Crypto on Hyperliquid. ARK Says That Changes Everything

For the first time, traders on Hyperliquid moved more money through stocks and commodities than through crypto. Lorenzo Valente, director of digital assets research at ARK Invest, >announced the milestone Thursday on X: "We are entering a new era for >DeFi." Hyperliquid, he said, had for the first time generated more trading volume from so-called real-world assets, or RWAs, than from crypto in a single week. RWAs—meaning tokenized versions of traditional financial instruments like company shares, crude oil, or the S&P 500, converted into blockchain-based contracts that traders can buy and sell around the clock—totaled $25.1 billion during July 13–19, or 52% of Hyperliquid's $48.2 billion in weekly volume, per Blockworks data. Valente put the latest running figure at $26 billion and 54%. The context makes that number land harder. Total perpetual >DEX volume across the industry last week was $79 billion. Hyperliquid processed $50 billion of it. The $26 billion in RWA trading alone—just the stock bets, the oil contracts, the index plays—was larger than the combined crypto perpetual volume of every other decentralized exchange on the market. The mechanism behind this is HIP-3, a framework Hyperliquid launched in October 2025 that lets outside teams build their own perpetual markets—contracts that track an asset's price with no expiry date, letting traders bet on it going up or down with borrowed money—using Hyperliquid's existing infrastructure. Builders stake 500,000 HYPE tokens, currently worth roughly $30 million, to access the system. We are entering a new era for DeFi. For the first time ever, @HyperliquidX generated more volume from RWAs than crypto in a single week. RWAs accounted for 54% of total trading volume. An even more interesting trend: since June, single stocks have overtaken indices and… pic.twitter.com/INbfCwc5pJ — Lorenzo Valente (@LorenzoARK) July 23, 2026 Since June, individual stocks have overtaken indices and commodities inside HIP-3, with single-stock perpetuals now making up 61% of all RWA tradin