Hyperliquid takes aim at Kalshi, Polymarket targeting $24bn prediction markets

Hyperliquid is nibbling away at Kalshi and Polymarket.

The decentralised finance exchange processing $6 billion in daily derivatives volume launched its first outcome contracts over the weekend — and the early numbers turned heads, according to Hyunsu Jung, CEO of Hyperion DeFi.

Its first Bitcoin outcome market did roughly three times the volume of equivalent markets on Polymarket and Kalshi combined, Jung told DL News.

“This proves that having a shared liquidity layer is effective in converting users,” he said. "Binary markets is an obvious next step in building the full financial stack on Hyperliquid, which is meaningfully dominating crypto perpetuals and in the first half of 2026 has demonstrated the possibilities of 24/7 real-world asset trading.”

Hyperion DeFi is a US publicly-traded company that accumulates Hyperliquid's HYPE token.

The launch puts Hyperliquid in direct competiton with Polymarket and Kalshi — and, according to a note shared with DL News by Bernstein analysts Gautam Chhugani and his colleagues on Monday, the timing could hardly be more significant.

Bernstein has just extended its digital assets research coverage to include prediction markets as one of three trends it is tracking alongside tokenisation and stablecoins, a signal of how seriously Wall Street is taking the sector.

Fund managers circling

The Bernstein memo frames Hyperliquid's launch against a broader shift that is just beginning to register on institutional radar screens…