Hyperliquid’s open interest was reported at a record $16.36 billion on 19 September, passing the previous high set exactly one year earlier on 18 September 2025.
At 08:07 UTC today we called its own public endpoint info/metaAndAssetCtxs and summed all 234 contracts one by one. The figure that came back was $13.08 billion.
Roughly three billion apart. Nothing sold off in between — the two numbers are counting different things.
The gap is HIP-3, not the core book
metaAndAssetCtxs returns Hyperliquid’s core perpetual universe, which today is 234 contracts. The $16.36 billion figure also includes markets deployed by third parties on HIP-3: the mechanism launched in October 2025 that lets outside teams stake HYPE and spin up their own perpetual markets, with underlyings spanning US equities, gold and crude, the S&P 500, and private companies such as SpaceX.
On the same reporting, cumulative HIP-3 volume had passed $548 billion by early September, roughly 30% of the platform’s trailing 30-day total.
So both numbers are correct. One counts the core book; the other counts the core book plus the third-party layer on top. Before quoting either, know which one you are quoting.
(One discrepancy worth flagging: Gate’s write-up of the BlockBeats item gives the previous record as $16.36 billion too, which contradicts “new high.” We go with the BlockBeats and Lookonchain originals and leave that restatement alone.)
On funding: hourly settlement puts it near the top on an annualised basis
Hyperliquid settles every hour, so its readings are inherently far smaller than an eight-hour venue’s — small is not low. From the same 08:07 UTC pull, the largest contracts in the core book:
| Instrument | Open interest | Hourly reading | Annualised |
|---|---|---|---|
| BTC | $3.58bn | 0.001250% | 10.95% |
| ETH | $3.05bn | 0.002238% | 19.60% |
| HYPE | $2.07bn | 0.002326% | 20.37% |
| ZEC | $0.79bn | 0.001250% | 10.95% |
| SOL | $0.69bn | 0.001479% | 12.95% |
| NEAR | $0.33bn | 0.005395% | 47.26% |
Against the eight-hour venues at the same instant:
| Instrument | Binance (8h) | Annualised | Bybit (8h) | Annualised | Hyperliquid (1h) | Annualised |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BTC | 0.010000% | 10.95% | 0.010000% | 10.95% | 0.001250% | 10.95% |
| ETH | 0.009345% | 10.23% | 0.010000% | 10.95% | 0.002191% | 19.19% |
| BNB | 0.010527% | 11.53% | 0.010000% | 10.95% | 0.002723% | 23.86% |
That BNB row: Hyperliquid’s reading is barely a quarter of Binance’s, and its annualised figure is double. It is the same effect we wrote up in the smallest reading annualises highest, measured again today.
What it means for a position
A balanced two-legged book cares about one thing: has funding turned negative. Today it has not — all six instruments above printed positive, and there were no negative readings in the core book.
A record in open interest is neither bullish nor bearish on its own. It is a capacity signal: more open interest means a given position pushes the book around less, which helps when building; it equally means more gets squeezed out when the market turns. Both are real.
One caution on the table above: NEAR at 47.26% and LIT at 67.39% are not yield figures. They are the current reading multiplied by a year’s worth of periods, a comparison value. Small-cap funding can multiply several times over within a day and come straight back, on thin books with high all-in cost. Before touching any of it, read through the six hidden costs.
What to watch next
- Track the core book and the HIP-3 layer separately. A combined headline going up does not mean the depth on the handful of contracts you actually trade went up.
- HYPE’s own funding. It is now the third largest open interest on the venue at $2.07bn, annualising at 20.37% — double BTC. A platform token carrying the highest funding on its own platform is a structure worth following.
- The hourly-settlement illusion. Twenty-four periods a day makes the same rate look smaller, which quietly encourages larger positions. The convention changed; the risk did not.
Why funding is positive most of the time is here; how settlement intervals distort annualised figures is in eight hours to four; the year-by-year results are on our track record, including the row where ETHUSDT returned 0.787256% in 2022.
Sources: the $16.36 billion record, cumulative HIP-3 volume of $548 billion and the ~30% share come from BlockBeats’ 19 September flash and Lookonchain, with the prior record dated 2025-09-18; the $13.08 billion total and the per-contract funding are our own summation of Hyperliquid’s public endpoint info/metaAndAssetCtxs across 234 core perpetuals, read at 2026-09-21 08:07 UTC; the cross-venue comparison comes from info/predictedFundings (one response carrying Binance, Bybit and Hyperliquid quotes with their respective intervals) and Binance fapi/v1/premiumIndex at the same instant. Annualised figures assume the current reading holds unchanged and are comparison values, not expected returns. Past performance does not indicate future results.