Cathie Wood: Hyperliquid Echoes Solana’s Early Promise But Bitcoin Still Reigns Supreme

ARK Invest's visionary CEO drops bombshell comparison between emerging protocol and crypto's former rising star.

The Hyperliquid Parallel

Cathie Wood sees familiar patterns emerging—Hyperliquid's architecture mirrors Solana's early breakthrough potential, delivering blistering transaction speeds that could reshape decentralized trading. The protocol processes thousands of transactions per second while maintaining sub-second finality, creating the kind of infrastructure leap that made Solana a household name.

Bitcoin's Unshakable Throne

Despite emerging competitors, Wood maintains Bitcoin's dominance remains unchallenged. The original cryptocurrency continues commanding institutional adoption while serving as digital gold—a narrative that keeps traditional finance executives awake at night counting their soon-to-be-obsolete bond portfolios.

The real test? Whether Hyperliquid can survive crypto's brutal Darwinian selection process that's buried more 'promising' projects than Wall Street has buried ethical standards.

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Hyperliquid Compared to Solana’s Early Promise

Speaking on the Master Investor podcast, Wood said: “It’s exciting. It reminds me of solana in the earlier days, and Solana has proven its worth and is, you know, there with the big boys.”

ARK Invest currently holds bitcoin (ARKB), Ethereum, and Solana in its public funds, with exposure to Solana through Breera Sports. Wood clarified that Solana’s treasury is backed by Middle Eastern investors and guided by economist Art Laffer.

She stopped short of confirming any Hyperliquid position but described it as a protocol worth monitoring. Her comments arrive as competition between perpetual futures DEXs heats up, with rival Aster recently overtaking Hyperliquid in volume and open interest after launching its token.

Bitcoin Stays at the Core

Wood emphasized that despite the HYPE around new tokens, her conviction remains with a small group of dominant networks.

“We don’t think there are going to be very many cryptocurrencies,” she said. “Bitcoin owns the cryptocurrency space when it comes to pure crypto.”

She credited Bitcoin’s fixed supply and resilience as reasons it remains Ark’s primary focus, while acknowledging Ethereum’s role as the backbone of DeFi and the growing importance of stablecoins.

Wood also noted that ARK holds some derivative assets tied to Solana and DeFi protocols like Uniswap but described these as secondary. “If you’re talking about the big boys or girls, those are the big three right now,” she said, referring to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana.

Retail and Quants Drive DEX Adoption

While institutions still rely on centralized exchanges for compliance and fiat access, decentralized exchanges are winning over retail traders and quants.

Jamie Elkaleh, chief marketing officer at Bitget Wallet, said incentives like airdrops, low fees, and speed have brought more users to DEXs. He added that order-book platforms like Hyperliquid and DYDX v4 are narrowing the performance gap with centralized rivals. They now offer liquidity once thought out of reach for DeFi.

Cathie Wood’s comments highlight how quickly new protocols like Hyperliquid are rising in the DeFi space. But even as competition intensifies, ARK’s focus on Bitcoin, ethereum and Solana reflects her view that only a few dominant networks will truly define the future of crypto.

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