The US-Iran war created a 24/7 oil market on-chain. Oil perps now account for 30% of Hyperliquid's open interest

When the US–Iran situation escalated, something weird happened. Oil markets stuck to their usual trading hours, but Hyperliquid didn’t. Out of nowhere, there was real demand for 24/7 oil exposure on-chain. After HIP-3 commodity perps went live in December 2025, they basically went from irrelevant to ~30% of total open interest by the end of Q1. Total open interest climbed to $2.1B, then pushed to a fresh ATH of $2.3B on April 6.

Zoom out for a second, and it makes sense. Crude was up 76.9% in Q1, the best-performing major asset by a mile. Gold kept grinding higher (+8.1%). Meanwhile, BTC dropped 22%, somehow doing worse than the S&P (-4.8%) and even the NASDAQ (-7.1%).

Crypto as a whole got hit hard. About $622B wiped, market cap down 20.4% to $2.4T. But while most of the space was bleeding, Hyperliquid’s commodity markets were quietly putting up record volume week after week.

Takeaway: People weren’t just looking for 24/7 crypto trading. They wanted 24/7 oil trading, and crypto infrastructure was the only place to get it. Best use case for crypto?

Source: https://www.coingecko.com/research/publications/2026-q1-crypto-industry-report