Hyperliquid Strategies (PURR) Surpasses MicroStrategy in HYPE Gains, But Is It Worth the Investment?

Author: Shenchao TechFlow

On May 24, a tweet about Hyperliquid Strategies (NASDAQ: PURR) sparked considerable discussion on English CT:

The company bought HYPE for approximately $220 million, and its current unrealized profit is nearing $1 billion, even surpassing the profit efficiency of Michael Saylor’s strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) on BTC.

This topic is gradually spreading within the Chinese-speaking community. HYPE recently reached a new all-time high above $62, surging over 150% this year and becoming one of the strongest-performing mainstream crypto assets of the year.

As the only listed proxy for HYPE, PURR has risen over 100% year-to-date and naturally becomes a FOMO target during U.S. equity research.

But before following the trend, there are a few questions to clarify first:

1. What exactly is this company?

2. What’s the difference between this and buying HYPE directly?

3. Can the claim that "capital efficiency exceeds MicroStrategy" withstand scrutiny?

To cut to the chase: PURR is not a company with any real business—it’s purely a $HYPE-themed packaging product.

Its business model is simple: buy HYPE, stake HYPE, hold HYPE. As of April 2026, public information shows the company holds approximately 20 million HYPE tokens and approximately $113 million in cash, with zero debt.

This means that the entire value of this stock depends on one thing: the price of HYPE.

Since there is no business to analyze, evaluating such companies comes down to just two dimensions: the underlying assets themselves, and who is operating the shell.

The latter determines capital operation capabilities—such as when to issue additional tokens, when to repurchase and support prices, and how to manage the premium or discount between stock price and net asset value—and also influences whether institutional capital is willing to enter through this instrument.

Historically, PURR was formerly Sonnet BioTherapeutics, a small biotech company listed on Nasdaq. In July 2025, it announced a merger with Rorschach I, completed in December of the same year, with an overall valuation of $888 million, and was renamed Hyperliquid Strategies, with the ticker changed to PURR.

Notably, the initiator of this transaction is Paradigm and Atlas Merchant Capital.

Paradigm is one of the top venture capital firms in the crypto industry, having invested in projects such as Uniswap, Blur, and Friend.tech, and has a deep presence in the Hyperliquid ecosystem, directly participating in the formation of this SPAC.

Atlas Merchant Capital is a financial services investment firm based in New York and London. Its two founders hold key positions at PURR: Chairman Bob Diamond, former CEO of Barclays, and CEO David Schamis, former partner at JC Flowers.

The board also includes former Boston Fed president Eric Rosengren and former NYSE COO Larry Leibowitz. Other participants include Galaxy, D1, and Pantera—leading institutions in the crypto and macro space.

Most of DAT's management team comes from the crypto-native space, while PURR is almost entirely composed of veterans from traditional finance.

PURR caught the attention of the Chinese-speaking community primarily due to HYPE's own strong performance.

HYPE rose from around $25 at the beginning of the year, breaking through $62 in May to set a new all-time high, achieving a year-to-date gain of over 150%. Amid BTC’s sideways movement and modest performances from ETH and SOL this year, HYPE has been the standout performer among major crypto assets.

Our previous article broke down Hyperliquid’s fundamental feedback loop: approximately 70% market share in perp DEX, weekly fee revenue exceeding $10 million, and 97% of protocol fees used to repurchase and burn HYPE—this flywheel continues to accelerate.

(Reference reading: "Market Insight: Four Key Narratives Behind the Recent Surge in Altcoin Popularity, from HYPE to ZEC")

HYPE rises, and PURR naturally follows suit.

As the only currently listed proxy for HYPE on U.S. exchanges, PURR has surged over 100% year-to-date, rising from the $3 range to a recent high of $8.79.

For investors with only U.S. stock accounts and no direct exposure to the crypto market, PURR is nearly the only way to gain exposure to HYPE. However, what transformed PURR from a niche asset into a social media topic were several institutional signals that emerged密集ly since May.

Goldman Sachs disclosed in its Q1 13F filing that it purchased approximately 650,000 shares of PURR. Although the amount is relatively small (around $3.3 million), Goldman Sachs’ name alone serves as a strong endorsement. During the same period, the HYPE spot ETFs from 21Shares and Bitwise were listed on Nasdaq and NYSE, respectively, and Cantor Fitzgerald raised its price target for PURR from $6 to $8.

These events, occurring during HYPE’s record-high window, brought PURR into the spotlight for more people.

Then there's the tweet mentioned at the beginning of the article: PURR bought HYPE with a principal of $220 million and is currently sitting on nearly $1 billion in unrealized gains—by short-term standards, its capital efficiency certainly exceeds that of MicroStrategy.

Under such a significant surge, it naturally attracts a lot of attention. However, if you're considering trading this stock, proceed with caution.

Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) invested over $60 billion in BTC at an average cost of approximately $75,000; PURR spent only about $220 million on HYPE, yet achieved unrealized gains approaching or even exceeding those of the former. Does this mean PURR’s capital efficiency far surpasses that of MicroStrategy?

This comparison is numerically correct but logically misleading.

The average cost of early HYPE positions in PURR was around $7, and the current price is $62, representing nearly a 9x increase. The Strategy’s average cost for BTC was approximately $75,000, and BTC is now trading near that same level, with almost no gain.

Therefore, PURR's higher unrealized profit is not due to any smarter actions by the company, but simply because the underlying assets have appreciated at completely different levels. Anyone who, at the same time, used the same amount of money to directly buy HYPE spot assets would achieve the same rate of return, without bearing the risk of equity dilution.

In other words, this is a victory of “choosing the right coin.” If PURR’s launch date had been pushed back by six months, and you had entered at $40 for HYPE, this “capital efficiency” story would no longer hold.

For U.S. investors who just started following PURR today, a more practical question is: At today’s price, are you paying a premium or a discount relative to the value of HYPE held by the company?

This involves DAT Company's most critical valuation metric—mNAV (modified net asset value per share).

We pulled data from PURR’s official dashboard and SEC filings to perform a quick calculation of adjusted net asset value per share (mNAV).

The company currently holds 20.8 million HYPE tokens (approximately $1.296 billion at current prices), plus $114 million in cash, resulting in a net asset value of approximately $1.34 billion after deducting deferred tax liabilities and other liabilities.

If we consider only the 134.6 million shares outstanding, the NAV per share is approximately $9.98, while the current stock price is $7.67, representing a discount of about 23%. If we include the approximately 29.8 million existing warrants, fully diluted shares amount to about 155 million, reducing the NAV per share to approximately $8.66 and the discount to about 11%. However, the company has just registered an additional 35.16 million shares for issuance; if all are exercised, the share count expands to approximately 190 million, lowering the NAV per share to $7.07, at which point the stock price represents a slight premium of 1.08 times.

So, whether PURR is "cheap" or "expensive" depends on how much dilution you expect in the future.

Issuing more shares isn't inherently bad. If management issues shares at a high premium and uses the raised funds to buy more HYPE, the token balance per share may actually increase. However, if the company continues issuing shares when market sentiment cools and the price falls below NAV, it dilutes existing shareholders.

The company has only been in operation for six months and has not yet experienced a full market downturn; there is no historical record to reference how management will act under extreme conditions.

Additionally, note that the deferred tax liability used in the calculation above is $60.5 million as of the Q3 financial reporting date (March 31). However, HYPE has risen significantly since the end of March, and the tax liability corresponding to the unrealized gains has likely increased further, meaning the actual NAV may be lower than our calculated figure.

This is the most practical question. Since all of PURR’s value comes from HYPE, why not skip the middleman and buy HYPE directly?

The answer is simple: Some investors cannot buy directly. U.S. retirement accounts (IRAs, 401(k)s), traditional brokerage accounts, and certain institutional funds with strict compliance requirements cannot hold crypto assets directly.

Moreover, the Hyperliquid platform explicitly restricts access to U.S. residents.

Therefore, PURR offers a Nasdaq-listed stock wrapper that allows these funds to gain exposure to HYPE through standard stock trading. The shell structure created by Paradigm essentially sells this compliant access channel.

If you fall into this category of investors, PURR is currently almost the only option. Although the HYPE spot ETFs from 21Shares and Bitwise launched in mid-May, these products have been trading for a very short time, and their liquidity and tracking error remain to be evaluated.

But if you have the ability to buy HYPE directly, then PURR’s stock wrapper becomes a pure friction cost with negative effects—it cannot be considered a beta overlay for HYPE.

This cost is reflected at several levels:

First, dilution risk. When you hold HYPE directly, your share cannot be diluted by others. However, if you hold PURR shares, the company can issue additional shares at any time to buy more HYPE.

Second, the yield transmission is incomplete. Holding HYPE directly allows you to stake and earn staking rewards, with future airdrops and ecosystem incentives credited directly to your wallet. When holding through PURR, staking rewards first go to the company’s account, and after deducting operational fees and taxes, the returns are only indirectly reflected in the net asset value per share.

Third, trading hours and pricing friction. HYPE is traded 24/7, while PURR is only tradable during U.S. market hours. If HYPE experiences significant price movements over the weekend or after hours, PURR holders must wait until the market opens to react.

Fourth, counterparty risk. The SEC filing discloses that all of PURR’s HYPE holdings are held with a single custodian. By holding through PURR, the security of your assets depends on the custodian’s ability to fulfill its obligations and the company’s operational continuity.

My assessment is that PURR functions more as a "channel product" than an "investment product." Its value lies solely in facilitating a bridge from traditional financial accounts to HYPE. If you don’t need this bridge, every additional layer of risk it introduces is unnecessary.

Therefore, for Chinese-speaking crypto and U.S. stock investors, the conclusion is straightforward:

Your judgment should be about whether you’re bullish on HYPE, not about whether you’re bullish on the PURR shell.