Oil volatility triggered by the Iran conflict is pushing traders toward decentralized exchanges (DEXs) like Hyperliquid, where markets never close, Wall Street investment bank JPMorgan said in a report on Wednesday.
The bank reported a surge in activity from non-crypto investors using perpetual futures, derivatives with no expiry date, to gain around-the-clock exposure to oil. Unlike traditional sites, these contracts trade 24/7 and use financing rates to track spot prices.
“In particular, oil trading boomed on the Hyperliquid exchange earlier this month when the war in Iran broke out, with CME traders unable to react when strikes on Iranian infrastructure broke out over the weekend,” wrote analysts led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou.
Market volatility increased following the outbreak of war in the Middle East, with oil prices leading to sharp swings as traders reacted to supply risks and geopolitical uncertainty. The initial shock was amplified by low liquidity outside of traditional trading hours, leading to larger price swings and pushing investors to venues with continuous 24/7 market access.
A decentralized exchange (DEX) is a peer-to-peer marketplace where users trade cryptocurrencies directly without intermediaries. Unlike centralized exchanges, DEXs are non-custodial, meaning users retain control of their private keys and funds.
Rather than relying on a central operator, DEXs use smart contracts to automatically execute transactions and settle them on-chain. These trustless systems are a rapidly growing part of the crypto market and are generating new types of financial products.
With CME markets closed this weekend, traders turned to Hyperliquid’s CL-USDC perpetual security, which remained open for price discovery. The contract, margined in USDC with up to 20x leverage, reached a peak daily volume of $1.7 billion and is now the third most traded product on the platform, the bank said. Open interest has climbed to around $300 million.
More broadly, analysts said the demand for 24/7 access to traditional assets is accelerating interest in DEXs. Platforms like Hyperliquid use on-chain order books rather than automated market makers, offering tighter spreads and more precise execution, closer to traditional markets.
Features such as sub-second finality and portfolio margin further appeal to institutional traders by enabling faster execution and more capital efficient strategies.
As a result, analysts say, DEXs are taking share from mid-tier centralized exchanges in crypto derivatives, driven by speed, liquidity, self-custody and seamless market access.
The trend is likely to extend beyond commodities, as DEXs capitalize on a key gap in traditional finance: markets that don’t close, the report adds.
Hyperliquid’s HYPE token is up about 25% year to date, outperforming much of the broader crypto market.
Learn more: Iranian crypto outflows jumped 700% minutes after US-Israeli airstrikes, says Elliptic
