Written by: BUBBLE, Rhythm
On June 17, Eyenovia (stock code: EYEN), an eye medicine digital technology company, announced that it had signed a securities purchase agreement to conduct a PIPE (Private Equity) with institutional qualified investors for $50 million, which will be used to establish its first cryptocurrency reserve program, targeting Hyperliquid's native token HYPE. The investment amount of $50 million even far exceeds the company's market value of $20 million. Since the announcement of the news, EYEN's US stock market has continued to rise. As of yesterday's close, EYEN's market value has quadrupled from before the announcement, soaring to $80 million.
To promote the implementation of this strategic transformation, the company simultaneously appointed Hyunsu Jung as the new Chief Investment Officer (CIO) and member of the board of directors. On July 3, the company name will be officially changed to Hyperion DeFi, and the stock code will also be updated to HYPD.
What is Eyenovia, the first US-listed company to use HYPE tokens for its "micro-strategy" plan? Who is Hyunsu Jung, the man behind it? Nowadays, more and more companies are using Crypto tokens to "rebirth". Will HYPE be a better choice?
In response to these questions, BlockBeats interviewed MAX, a core member of the Hyperliquid community, and Hyunsu Jung, the newly appointed Chief Investment Officer of Eyenovia.
From an ophthalmology company on the verge of delisting to a listed company holding the “largest” HYPE
The Hyperliquid mainnet has performed strongly recently, with the locked volume (TVL) soaring to the top ten public chain projects, the market value of the native token HYPE jumping to 11th place in cryptocurrencies, user participation steadily increasing, the platform's daily handling fees stabilized in the range of 2-3 million US dollars, and annualized revenue close to 1 billion US dollars. In sharp contrast, Eyenovia, which had nothing to do with blockchain, was in a worse situation before the transformation. The company landed on the Nasdaq at a price of 800 US dollars per share in February 2018, but the stock price has since fallen all the way to below 1 US dollar in April 2025, on the verge of delisting.
Eyenovia was originally engaged in micro-dose eye drops, and its flagship product Optejet is aimed at postoperative ophthalmology, pediatric myopia and other fields. However, in the past few years, Eyenovia's revenue has been dismal, with annual revenue of only $56,000 in 2024 and a net loss of up to $50 million, and it was once facing the risk of delisting. At a time when the prospects for traditional businesses are bleak, the company chose to bet on crypto assets in an all-out manner, intending to find a "new lifeline" through the high-growth ecosystem of Hyperliquid.
According to the official announcement on June 17, Eyenovia will issue 15.4 million convertible preferred shares and 30.8 million common stock warrants with an exercise price of $3.25. If all warrants are exercised, the company can raise up to $150 million. Eyenovia announced on Monday, June 23 that it had purchased 1,040,584.5 HYPEs at an average price of approximately $34 per HYPE, which the company currently holds in custody in Anchorage.
It was in such a desperate situation that Eyenovia turned its attention to the fast-growing on-chain exchange Hyperliquid, and regarded the HYPE reserve as the last straw to "extend life". Facts have proved that this move has indeed given the market strong confidence. After the relevant news came out, Eyenovia's stock price soared 134% in a single day, instantly reversing the continuous decline. Through this "life-saving straw" of crypto assets, a small and endangered ophthalmology company has ushered in the hope of regaining new life.
In addition to the initial $50 million allocation, Eyenovia also designed warrants to obtain more funds, and Hyunsu told BlockBeats that "Eyenovia plans to become the listed company with the largest HYPE holdings in the world."
The executives who parachuted into the cryptocurrency circle are senior DeFi traders behind them
Before announcing its entry into the crypto space, Eyenovia had no connection to the blockchain industry. Therefore, when the company announced the appointment of Hyunsu Jung as Chief Investment Officer with 500,000 shares of common stock as an incentive, it caused quite a stir in the industry. Through the conversation, we learned that Hyunsu Jung began his career as a consultant at EY-Parthenon and participated in major corporate mergers and acquisitions transactions, such as the split of United Technologies. However, in 2021, facing the bureaucratic and slow working atmosphere in traditional institutions, Hyunsu felt disillusioned and frustrated with his career development and decided to jump to the emerging crypto industry to seek a breakthrough. According to him, this choice stems from his dissatisfaction with the stagnation of traditional enterprises and his belief in the future potential of blockchain.
Hyunsu's first stop in the blockchain industry was DARMA Capital, a digital asset investment advisory company founded by ConsenSys co-founder Andrew Keys in 2018. While at DARMA, he led the construction of the Filecoin asset utilization product, which aims to reduce the financial barriers for distributed storage providers to obtain FIL tokens. The derivative product (FAUS) has obtained a license from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and the first batch of FIL lending scenarios has been provided, and it has gradually expanded to more than 50 data center operation teams around the world, with a total of more than $300 million in deployed assets. Hyunsu pointed out that "if the on-chain assets have actual utility, then the income opportunities they generate will far exceed the level that traditional finance can provide."
Hyunsu did not suddenly intersect with the Hyperliquid project. This was due to his personal relationship with Max, a core member of the ecosystem. The two met and interacted as early as when they were studying abroad. As Max recalled on X: "It has been nearly ten years since Hyunsu and I were penniless exchange students in Edinburgh; it has been five years since we broke into the cryptocurrency world as roommates in San Juan." Hyunsu told BlockBeats that Max introduced Hyunsu to the community during the Hyperliquid public testnet in 2023, and Hyunsu has continued to work hard in Hyperliquid since then.
In addition to staking HYPE, what else does Eyenovia do?
Shortly after Eyenovia announced the purchase of HYPE, Canadian listed company Tony G Co-Investment attempted a similar operation. On June 12, the company bought 10,000 HYPEs. In less than an hour, the stock price soared by more than 800%. With an investment of only $430,000, it leveraged the market value to increase by an astonishing $57 million.
According to official disclosures, Eyenovia used most of the funds raised to purchase more than one million HYPE tokens. In Hyperliquid's HIP-3 protocol mechanism, deploying a token market requires staking at least 1 million HYPEs, and node owners can receive a share of the market's transaction fees. Eyenovia's purchase just met this requirement, which greatly increased the compound possibility of "holding coins + nodes + income". It is not uncommon for listed companies to include crypto assets in their balance sheets, and Eyenovia is undoubtedly one of the latest and most radical practitioners.
This transaction is regarded by the community as the beginning of the Hyperliquid version of the "MicroStrategy Model". Community member Telaga also proposed the long-term concept of how to use HYPE to operate Strategy, and envisioned building an asset management closed loop with HYPE as the core, covering CDT bond tokens, NFT options, LP market making, liquidity vaults, perpetual contracts and DeFi modules, to achieve structural exposure configuration and compound growth of funds on the chain.
Specifically, the treasury is funded by external users, mainly in the form of USD stablecoins. After the funds are deposited, users will receive two types of on-chain certificates: one is a convertible bond token (CDT), which represents the principal equity; the other is an option NFT, which symbolizes future income options or repurchase rights. This design allows user assets to be both liquid and bound to long-term value growth expectations through a contract structure.
Hyunsu told BlockBeats that the company will not only include HYPE in its balance sheet, but also plans to establish a long-term compound interest model through staking, on-chain yield agreements, referral rebates, node operations, etc.
On June 25, Eyenovia has begun to implement its commitment to on-chain participation, announcing the launch of the joint validator node Kinetiq x Hyperion in cooperation with Hyperliquid's native staking protocol Kinetiq. The node uses Eyenovia's recently purchased 1 million HYPE to provide verification services for the Hyperliquid network, which not only improves network security, but also allows the company to directly participate in on-chain revenue acquisition. It is reported that the node is technically supported by Pier Two, an institutional-level node service provider, and earns native revenue by staking HYPE.
At the same time, Hyunsu gave BlockBeats two possible cases for Eyenovia to be implemented in the future:
1. Sign a bilateral agreement with the trading institution, pledge HYPE and bind the wallet to the institution's main wallet. The trading party can enjoy a fee discount without having to bear HYPE exposure or hedge on its own.
2. Hyperliquid interfaces can transfer fee discounts to new users through referral codes. If an interface lacks top-level fee tiers, it can improve its competitiveness through the "Pledge Lease Agreement".
Hyunsu told BlockBeats that although Eyenovia does not currently plan to build or operate any on-chain products, it plans to become an active investor and responsible participant in the Hyperliquid ecosystem. It will participate in DeFi applications on HyperEVM subject to internal approval, with a focus on LST liquidity and lending market supply.
Why HYPE?
In the U.S. stock market, "buying coins" is becoming a new way for some companies to tell valuation stories. From the pioneer MicroStrategy to the latecomers SharpLink and GameStop, many companies have tried to achieve stock price surges and market value management by purchasing mainstream crypto assets (such as BTC and ETH).
Among them, since MicroStrategy made a bold bet on Bitcoin in 2020, its stock price has soared from the initial dozen dollars to 370 dollars in 2025, and its market value has exceeded 100 billion US dollars, which can be regarded as a textbook case of "coin-stock integration". And a little-known small gaming company SharpLink Gaming (SBET) announced in May 2025 that it had purchased 163,000 Ethereum (ETH) with $425 million in private financing, and its stock price soared 500% on the same day. Against the backdrop of these examples, Eyenovia abandoned traditional BTC and ETH and chose the still emerging HYPE, which naturally aroused curiosity: Why HYPE?
Hyunsu told BlockBeats, "HYPE has unique deflationary properties among the current mainstream crypto assets. The lack of structural net selling pressure makes it more suitable as a collateral asset and also builds a more solid foundation for DeFi. In addition, the scarcity of HYPE spot also brings us an advantage." The Hyperliquid blockchain has a built-in transaction fee repurchase and destruction mechanism, and the accumulated transaction fees of the network will be automatically used to repurchase and "recycle" HYPE in circulation on the market.
As of June 2025, more than 25 million HYPEs have been redeemed and destroyed by the protocol, making HYPE the 11th largest cryptocurrency in the world by market value. The supply is shrinking, which makes it more suitable as a collateral asset than Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc., and builds a more solid value foundation for DeFi applications. In contrast, although Bitcoin is highly recognized by institutions, its role is more like a digital commodity; Ethereum has a certain deflationary tendency (such as the burning of fees under the EIP-1559 mechanism), but there is still continuous ecological inflation and selling pressure. HYPE, on the other hand, continuously feeds back its own value through the rapid growth of on-chain transactions, forming an endogenous value support.
More importantly, Hyunsu emphasized that "there is a strong growth story behind HYPE." As a high-performance on-chain trading platform, Hyperliquid's daily trading volume and user indicators continue to rise, which brings HYPE growth linked to business fundamentals. In comparison, Bitcoin has been relatively mature after years of development, with limited "narrative space" and exposure that is almost commoditized.
Relatively speaking, HYPE has not yet been held by large-scale institutions or retail investors, and it is a new exposure opportunity with high growth potential for traditional investors. "HYPE has two major advantages as a treasury asset: first, HYPE is a "productive asset" and can obtain practical benefits such as transaction fee reductions after staking; second, HYPE is not yet widely held, and we can provide the market with a valuable and unique exposure." Hyunsu explained. These two points make Eyenovia stand out among many companies trying "crypto asset treasury", and also bring it a sustainable on-chain income path (such as staking income, node profit sharing, etc.), rather than just passively waiting for token appreciation.
From the perspective of broader market demand, Hyunsu believes that "HYPE, as a new type of collateral asset, can also be understood and accepted by traditional financial practitioners." In the current macro environment, asset selection is becoming more and more critical. HYPE's highlights in user growth rate and token economic design give it a natural advantage, and it is expected to meet the allocation needs of some institutional investors for high-growth chain assets.
At the same time, the rise of the decentralized perpetual contract market is also attracting the attention of traditional finance. "Liquidity attracts liquidity," Hyunsu pointed out, "Recent deployments in the blockchain field by traditional institutions including BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase (JPM), PayPal and Robinhood indicate that the on-chain market is becoming a new arena, and the on-chain perpetual trading market for non-crypto assets will release a larger pool of demand." This means that platforms like Hyperliquid that provide on-chain high-frequency trading still have huge room for future growth, and holding HYPE is tantamount to participating in the equity of this emerging "financial engine."
A lifeline, or an exit from liquidity?
It is undeniable that HYPE has injected vitality into Eyenovia. However, can betting on HYPE really establish a sustainable, dividend-paying, and governable on-chain financial model? Can the compound interest logic envisioned by Eyenovia support the financial paradigm shift of future US-listed companies? Or will it ultimately become an "exit liquidity" channel for Hyperliquid's early whales to cash out? These questions have sparked heated discussions in the community.
In this regard, Hyunsu told BlockBeats that "any conscious on-chain participation is an important part of increasing the awareness and usage of the Hyperliquid ecosystem." In other words, even if Eyenovia's current strategy is mainly to hold and pledge HYPE rather than develop killer applications on its own, as long as the company participates deeply in the ecosystem with real money, its behavior itself will expand Hyperliquid's influence and user base. For this reason, Eyenovia is not worried about the outside world's so-called "only hoarding coins without construction" doubts.
In response to the question of "if HYPE is mainly acquired through OTC but not invested in ecosystem construction, it may become an exit channel for early whales", Hyunsu said that Eyenovia has a fiduciary obligation to shareholders and must execute its HYPE treasury strategy with the highest efficiency. If there is an OTC opportunity to acquire a large amount of HYPE at a discount in the future, the company will carefully decide whether to participate based on the situation.
But for now, he does not think that Eyenovia's purchase provides an early whale exit channel, because HYPE's early airdropped tokens have been unlocked for circulation, except for the unlocking of Hyperliquid core contributors, which will begin in November 2025. But according to MAX, no team members are ready to sell their locked tokens, and there is no large-scale selling pressure on locked tokens waiting to be unlocked in the market.
The more than 1 million HYPEs purchased by Eyenovia this time were all circulating chips absorbed from the secondary market, which in turn reduced the market selling pressure to a certain extent. In addition, by cooperating with compliant custody and trading platforms such as Anchorage, the company ensured the transparency and legality of the coin purchase process and protected the interests of small and medium shareholders as much as possible.
Of course, any high-volatility asset strategy cannot avoid the issue of risk management. If the price of HYPE drops sharply in the future, will it be a fatal blow to Eyenovia's operations and finances? Hyunsu gave a series of plans for this. He said that the company has developed a plan to hedge exposure when necessary. When deploying the HYPE treasury, Eyenovia is more concerned with fixed income generated by staking or income paths with low correlation with market trends, thereby reducing dependence on token price fluctuations.
Hyunsu did not disclose more specific details, but according to the method disclosed, the team may adopt tools such as synthetic income realization (such as using derivatives to lock in part of the book profit) and protective options to hedge the downside risk. Once the HYPE market situation deteriorates sharply, these hedging strategies will act as shock absorbers to protect the stability of the company's balance sheet and shareholder value.
CEX dragon slaying technique?
Looking ahead, whether Eyenovia’s “on-chain micro-strategy” experiment will be successful remains to be tested by time.
On the one hand, whether the Hyperliquid ecosystem can continue to maintain rapid growth and whether the HYPE token model can prove its long-term value in the new cycle are key factors in determining the success or failure of Eyenovia's financial transformation; on the other hand, the dynamics of mainstream institutions including Coinbase and Robinhood entering the US compliant perpetual market have also added external competitive pressure to Hyperliquid.
It can be said that Eyenovia is at the forefront of the intersection of traditional finance and the crypto world, and every step of its exploration is full of unknowns.
