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After reaching a new ATH (All-Time High), is the "HYPE Edition MicroStrategy" $PURR stock worth considering?

深潮TechFlow

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PURR is not an operating company; it is essentially a pure $HYPE stock packaging product.

Original Title: "$HYPE Hits New High, Is the Stock of "$PURR Hyperliquid Version" Worth Considering?"

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

The company invested around $220 million in HYPE, with current unrealized gains approaching $1 billion, even surpassing Michael Saylor's Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) in BTC profit efficiency.

This topic is now gradually spreading to the Chinese community. HYPE recently hit a historical high of over $62, with a year-to-date increase of over 150%, making it one of the strongest-performing mainstream crypto assets this year.

As the only publicly traded representation of HYPE, PURR has also risen by over 100% since the beginning of the year, naturally becoming a FOMO target for stock investors.

$PURR, Pure DAT

Let's start with the conclusion: PURR is not a company with actual business operations; it is essentially a packaged $HYPE stock product.

Its business model can be summarized in one sentence: Buy HYPE, Stake HYPE, Hold HYPE. As of April 2026, public information shows that the company holds approximately 20 million HYPE tokens, along with around $113 million in cash, and zero debt.

This means that the entire value of its stock depends on one thing, the price of HYPE.

Since there is no business to analyze, evaluating such a company comes down to two dimensions: the underlying asset itself and who is operating this shell.

The latter determines the capital operation capabilities, such as when to issue more coins for purchase, when to conduct buybacks for price support, how to manage the premium-discount relationship between stock price and net asset value... and whether institutional funds are willing to enter through this instrument.

Historically, PURR's predecessor was Sonnet BioTherapeutics, a Nasdaq-listed small biotech company. In July 2025, it announced a merger with Rorschach I and completed the transaction in December of the same year, with an overall valuation of $8.88 billion, rebranding as Hyperliquid Strategies and changing its ticker to PURR.

It is worth noting that 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, with a deep involvement in the Hyperliquid ecosystem, and this time directly participating in the formation of the SPAC.

Atlas Merchant Capital is a New York and London-based financial services investment firm, whose two founders have taken core positions in PURR: Chairman Bob Diamond is the former CEO of Barclays Bank, and CEO David Schamis is a former partner at JC Flowers.

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

While most DAT companies are led by individuals from the crypto native community, PURR is almost entirely composed of traditional finance veterans.

$HYPE Strengthens, $PURR Skyrockets

PURR gained attention in the Chinese community, directly attributed to the strength of HYPE itself.

HYPE has surged from around $25 at the beginning of the year, breaking $62 in May to hit an all-time high, with a year-to-date increase of over 150%. Amid BTC's consolidation and ETH and SOL's muted performance this year, HYPE has been one of the most outstanding in the mainstream crypto assets.

Our previous articles have dissected Hyperliquid's fundamental closed loop: perp DEX holds about 70% market share, weekly revenues exceed tens of millions of dollars, and 97% of protocol fees are used for HYPE buybacks and burns, a flywheel that is still accelerating.

(Reference: "Market Watch: From HYPE to ZEC, Grasping the 4 Narrative Threads Behind the Recent Altcoin Craze")

As HYPE rises, PURR naturally follows suit.

As the only HYPE proxy target currently listed on the US stock market, PURR has seen a growth of over 100% from the beginning of the year, rising from the $3 range to a recent high of $8.79.

For investors who only have a US stock account and do not directly access the crypto market, PURR is almost the only choice to join the HYPE train. What turned PURR from a "niche asset" to a "social media topic" were several institutional signals landing intensively since May.

In its Q1 13F filing, Goldman Sachs disclosed buying around 650,000 shares of PURR, with an amount not significant (about $3.3 million), but the Goldman Sachs name itself is an endorsement. Meanwhile, during the same period, the 21Shares and Bitwise HYPE spot ETFs were successively listed on Nasdaq and NYSE, and Cantor Fitzgerald raised PURR's target price from $6 to $8.

These events coincided within the timeframe of the HYPE reaching new highs, bringing PURR into more people's view.

Then there's the tweet mentioned at the beginning of the article – PURR used $220 million in principal to buy HYPE, which is now almost $1 billion in profit, indicating that, in the short term, its capital efficiency is definitely higher than MicroStrategy's.

With a significant surge, it inevitably attracts a lot of attention. However, if you want to trade this stock, caution is still required.

Is DAT the most capital-efficient?

Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) invested over $60 billion to buy BTC, with an average cost of around $75,000; PURR only used about $220 million to buy HYPE, yet its profit is close to or even exceeds the former. Does this mean PURR's "capital efficiency" is much higher than MicroStrategy's?

While the numbers may support this comparison, it is somewhat misleading in logic.

The early-stage HYPE holdings of PURR had an average cost of around $7, and the current price is $62, nearly 9 times higher. Strategy's BTC has an average cost of around $75,000, and BTC is currently at a similar price, with little increase.

Therefore, the higher profit of PURR is not due to the company making smarter moves; the underlying asset's price surge is simply on a different scale. Anyone could achieve the same return at the same time by directly buying HYPE spot with the same amount of money, without the risk of equity dilution.

In other words, this is a victory of "picking the right coin." If you had entered at $40 when PURR was established, half a year ago, the story of "capital efficiency" would not hold at all.

For retail investors in the stock market who have only recently started paying attention to PURR, a more practical question is: If you buy PURR now, is the price you pay relative to the company's HYPE value a premium or a discount?

This involves the most core valuation metric of the DAT company—mNAV (modified Net Asset Value).

We pulled data from PURR's official dashboard and SEC filings, and conducted a simple mNAV (modified Net Asset Value) quick calculation.

The company currently holds 20.8 million HYPE (valued at approximately $1.296 billion at current prices), along with $114 million in cash, net assets of about $1.34 billion after deducting deferred tax liabilities and other debts.

If we only consider the issued 134.6 million shares, the NAV per share is approximately $9.98, with the current stock price at $7.67, indicating a discount of about 23%. If we include the approximately 29.8 million warrants outstanding, fully diluted to around 155 million shares, the NAV per share is about $8.66, representing a discount of around 11%. However, the company has just registered 35.16 million newly issued shares. If all of these are exercised, increasing the denominator to around 190 million shares, the NAV per share would decrease to $7.07, resulting in a slight premium of 1.08 times the stock price.

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

An additional issuance is not necessarily a bad thing. If management issues shares at a high premium, uses the raised funds to buy more HYPE, the holdings per share will actually increase. However, if market sentiment cools off and shares are issued when the stock price falls below NAV, it is diluting existing shareholders.

This company has only been established for six months and has not yet experienced a complete downturn cycle. There is no historical record to refer to regarding how management will operate in extreme circumstances.

It is also important to note that the deferred tax liability used in the above calculation was $60.5 million as of the Q3 financial report deadline (March 31). However, HYPE has increased significantly since the end of March, and the tax liability corresponding to unrealized appreciation has likely further increased. The actual NAV may be slightly lower than what we calculated.

The Difference Between Buying PURR and Buying HYPE Directly

This is the most practical question. Since all of PURR's value comes from HYPE, why shouldn't I skip the intermediary layer and buy HYPE directly?

The answer is simple: For a portion of investors, direct purchase is not an option. U.S. retirement accounts (IRAs, 401ks), traditional brokerage accounts, and some institution funds that have strict compliance requirements cannot hold cryptocurrency assets directly.

Furthermore, the Hyperliquid platform explicitly restricts usage by U.S. residents.

Therefore, PURR provides a Nasdaq-listed stock package that allows these funds to gain exposure to HYPE through standard stock trading. The shell built by Paradigm fundamentally sells this compliant pathway.

If you belong to this investor group, PURR is indeed currently almost the only option. Although 21Shares and Bitwise's HYPE spot ETFs were launched in mid-May, these products have a very short online time, and liquidity and tracking errors are still under observation.

However, if you have the capability to directly purchase HYPE, then the stock package layer of PURR becomes a pure frictional cost, with negative effects; it cannot be called a Beta return overlay of HYPE.

This cost is reflected in several aspects:

First, Dilution Risk. By directly holding HYPE, your stake will not be diluted by others. However, by holding PURR stock, the company can issue new shares at any time to purchase more HYPE.

Second, Incomplete Revenue Transmission. By holding HYPE directly, you can stake it yourself to earn staking rewards, and future airdrops and ecosystem incentives will be directly credited. Through holding PURR, staking rewards must first go to the company's account, deducted for operational expenses and taxes before indirectly reflecting in the net asset value per share.

Third, Trading Time and Pricing Friction. HYPE trades 24/7, while PURR only circulates during U.S. stock trading hours. If HYPE undergoes significant fluctuations over the weekend or after hours, PURR holders can only react at the market open.

Fourth, Counterparty Risk. SEC filings disclose that all of PURR's HYPE holdings are held with a single custodian. By holding PURR, the security of your assets depends on this custodian's performance and the company's operational continuity.

My assessment is that PURR is more like a "channel product" rather than an "investment product." Its value lies in bridging traditional financial accounts to HYPE, and that's all. If you do not need this channel, then every additional risk brought by the intermediary layer is unnecessary.

Therefore, for Chinese-speaking crypto and US stock investors, the conclusion is quite straightforward:

Your judgment should be based on whether you believe in the HYPE, not on whether you believe in the PURR shell.