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Weekly Beluga Insights

After a long year of pretty underwhelming airdrops, late last night perpetuals DEX HyperLiquid finally dropped their long-awaited token to traders who have used the platform. This wasn’t just any airdrop though, as HyperLiquid opted to airdrop 30% of the supply to traders, which at its current $6.3 billion market cap means almost $2 billion worth of tokens was given away for free. No vesting, no lockups, no VC investors, and despite all of this the token has done nothing but go up since its launch almost 24 hours ago.

This drop stands in huge contrast to the vast majority of launches we’ve seen this year, which typically included vesting periods, low supply allocation for users, and large allocations for insiders — it should come as no surprise that almost every one of these has continued to bleed out through the year. There are certainly a lot of lessons teams can learn from the success of $HYPE so far; for most, it is difficult to support a 30% allocation for an airdrop due to investor allocations (which HyperLiquid does not have) however the price action should show teams that building out a good product and rewarding your users pays off.

Major Movers of the Week

Public Trading Wallet Update

The Beluga Trading Wallet has gained another $16k in unrealized profit since our last update on November 22nd, primarily due to $FTM and $CRV putting up massive performances. We are now in the green on every position except Optimism $OP, however that is only down 3% — I expect both $OP and $ARB to pick up in the coming weeks as traders continue to rotate to Ethereum mainnet and Base (Base ranks as the top chain by inflows over the last 30 days).

Since most of my personal experience is with onchain trading rather than perpetuals or derivatives on a CEX, seeing the Base ecosystem heat up is exciting. I’ll be watching for some entries on Base tokens like $AERO and $VIRTUAL which we can scale into using profits from our other positions. AI meta continues to dominate onchain volumes, so this is probably the area to be focusing on. Since lower cap coins in this category are considerably higher risk than what we currently hold in our portfolio, we’ll have to be careful as we allocate there… but I think it’s worth it for the potential rewards.

Catch Up on What You Missed

• Justin Sun joins Trump’s World Liberty Financial as Adviser

• Brazilian congressman introduces bill for national bitcoin reserve

• XRP surges by double digits to new 3-year high, as ETF speculation grows

• ‘Japan’s MicroStrategy’ Metaplanet to raise $62 million for Bitcoin Investment

• HyperLiquid airdrops over $1.2 billion worth of tokens to users as HYPE crosses $4 billion FDV

Tweet of the Week

A great breakdown by research firm ASXN on the HyperLiquid airdrop this week, which saw many traders receive 8 figures for free.

Recent Beluga Content

Disclaimer

The content on this site is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice. While Beluga strives to ensure the accuracy and timeliness of information, there may be discrepancies when comparing our data to that of financial institutions, service providers, or specific product websites. Always consult with a professional before making any financial decisions.

Will McKinnon is the Head of Content for Beluga and has spent every day for many years trading coins. For that reason there are too many to name, however his largest holdings by a significant margin are Ethereum and Bitcoin. NFA DYOR