The Bull Case For Hyperliquid | Ryan Watkins
Speakers
Ryan Watkins
— Co-Founder, Syncracy Capital
Jason Yanowitz
— Co-Founder, Blockworks
Summary
Ryan Watkins of Syncrasy discusses running a crypto fund in 2026, arguing that the market now rewards asset picking over beta. He lays out his high-conviction thesis on Hyperliquid as a generational everything-exchange disrupting Binance, and explains why Bitcoin and Solana remain among the few quality assets. He also shares bearish views on Ethereum and Zcash, and flags lending and tokenized asset trading as categories to watch.
- Crypto market has moved from buying beta to underwriting real businesses; few assets meet a global allocator's bar.
- Hyperliquid is the single biggest breakout in crypto, evolving from a perp exchange into the 'house of all finance' with unified margin.
- Key Hyperliquid strengths: product experience, founder quality, community-driven market creation, revenue buybacks, and targeting centralised exchange market share.
- Bitcoin and Solana are among the only other assets worth holding; Ethereum is avoided due to lack of growth.
- Token unlocks remain a major overhang for many projects; clearing them could actually be bullish for high-quality assets.
- Lending protocols and tokenized spot trading are the next categories that could inflect once regulatory clarity arrives.
- Privacy coins like Zcash are overrated; revealed preference shows consumers want privacy as a feature, not a standalone asset.
- The four-year cycle may still hold, but fundamentals and growth dispersion among assets are increasingly important.
Ideas
Bitcoin is digital gold worth holding.
Bitcoin is digital gold and one of the very few crypto assets that a global capital allocator would actually want to own. It has no problematic token unlocks and would see strong buying demand if the price fell to levels where conviction is high (e.g., 30K or 60K).
Hyperliquid is the everything exchange.
Hyperliquid is building an everything exchange with unified margin to trade any asset (crypto, equities, commodities, prediction markets). It already has a dominant product with institutional-grade experience, a visionary founder, community-driven scaling, and revenue buybacks. Its true competitor is Binance, not just on-chain perp exchanges. The token has minimal early unlocks and the team is executing toward becoming the 'house of all finance', potentially capturing a massive share of global trading volume over time.
Avoid Ethereum; no growth.
Ethereum lacks growth and its valuation at $200B market cap is hard to justify unless one believes it will become the next digital gold. The speaker is not a buyer of ETH.
Buy Solana for growth.
Solana is one of the few quality L1s that has real growth and working products. The speaker is a buyer at current levels (around $40B market cap) and would not buy Ethereum instead. Growth is the key metric, and Solana's ecosystem is delivering.
Avoid Zcash; privacy is just feature.
Privacy is a feature, not a standalone asset class. Revealed preference (e.g., DuckDuckGo, Signal) shows the addressable market for extreme privacy is small. Zcash's recent run-ups were driven by derivatives and FOMO, not fundamental conviction. It has no meaningful use outside its own ecosystem.
