Bybit‘s month-long promotional campaign around options on Hyperliquid’s HYPE token ended on Sunday, closing a rewards program carrying up to $70,800 in stated incentives for options traders.
The “Let’s Go HYPE” campaign ran from Aug. 6 at 08:00 UTC until Sept. 6 at 07:59 UTC, according to Bybit’s official terms. That means the promotion had already closed by Sunday afternoon in Europe and the Middle East.
Bybit launched the campaign specifically to support the introduction of HYPEUSDT options, which began trading two days earlier on Aug. 4. The exchange described the promotion as having three stackable prize pools and said an individual participant could win as much as 13,000 USDT.
The combined advertised pools add up to $70,800.
The first consisted of 10,000 USDT in Bybit Pay vouchers. Users trading HYPE options for the first time who generated more than 10,000 USDT in transaction value could receive a 5 USDT voucher, with rewards distributed on a first-come, first-served basis until the allocation was exhausted.
A second pool offered 20,000 USDT through a lucky draw. Traders accumulated entries according to their effective HYPE options trading volume.
The biggest component was a trading-volume leaderboard with up to 40,800 USDT available.
There is an important distinction in the terms: unlike the lucky draw, the leaderboard was not limited to HYPE options. Bybit said trading in any of its options contracts counted toward effective volume. The combined 30-day options volume generated by all registered participants determined which reward tier would ultimately be unlocked, while the 20 traders with the highest individual volumes shared the corresponding pool.
Both buy and sell orders could count, subject to Bybit’s effective-trade requirements.
Participants had to register for the campaign and complete at least Level 1 individual identity verification or business verification. Users in restricted jurisdictions were excluded, and Bybit explicitly prohibited participation from residents of the European Economic Area. Rewards are due to be distributed after the campaign subject to the exchange’s eligibility and risk checks.
The promotion accompanied a significant expansion of Bybit’s options catalogue.
HYPEUSDT options first went live on Aug. 4 with contracts expiring Aug. 5 and Aug. 7. On Aug. 6, Bybit added expiries for Aug. 8, Aug. 9, Aug. 14, Aug. 21, Aug. 28 and Sept. 25, before moving to regular contract generation from Aug. 7 onward.
HYPE joins a Bybit options lineup that includes established cryptoassets such as Bitcoin, Ether and Solana as well as newer additions including XRP, MNT, DOGE and tokenized-gold asset XAUT. Bybit’s current specifications set the minimum HYPE options order at one HYPE and the maximum at 100,000 HYPE.
The exchange is continuing to subsidize options activity even after the dedicated HYPE campaign has ended.
On Sept. 1, Bybit extended its discount for options with three days or less until Sept. 30. HYPE is among the eligible underlying assets. The promotion lowers the maximum transaction-fee cap from 7% to 6% of the option premium and applies to regular, VIP, professional and institutional users.
The HYPE options campaign was also not Bybit’s first attempt this year to attach substantial trading incentives to Hyperliquid’s native token.
In June, the exchange ran a seven-day “Token Buzz” competition for HYPE perpetual futures with a prize pool of up to 100,000 USDT worth of HYPE. Traders needed at least 10,000 USDT in HYPE perpetual volume to qualify, and the top 500 participants were eligible for rewards, with the overall prize pool increasing as aggregate trading volume passed specified milestones.
HYPE was also included alongside BTC, ETH, SOL and several other tokens in Bybit’s May Hot Tokens Trading Arena, which offered as much as 261,000 USDT across spot and futures trading.
The repeated inclusion of HYPE suggests Bybit is treating the token as more than another spot listing. It has successively promoted HYPE spot, perpetuals and now options while also adding the asset to other services, including its Unified Trading Account borrowing program.
HYPE is the native asset of Hyperliquid, the blockchain-based trading ecosystem best known for its on-chain perpetual futures market. Its growing trading activity has made the token an increasingly important underlying asset for centralized exchanges looking to capture demand generated by an ecosystem that is itself competing with those exchanges.
Bybit Is Using HYPE to Compete With the Market That Created It
There is an unusual dynamic behind Bybit’s HYPE campaign.
Hyperliquid rose largely because crypto traders wanted an alternative to centralized derivatives exchanges. Yet the success of its ecosystem has created a token valuable and liquid enough for those same centralized exchanges to build derivatives products around it.
Bybit is effectively monetizing demand created by one of its competitors.
That makes the sequence of products important.
Listing HYPE spot is relatively straightforward. Offering a perpetual contract lets traders take leveraged directional positions. Adding options goes further because a functioning options market requires participants willing to quote and trade across strikes, expiries and volatility levels.
A new options product can therefore exist technically while still being unattractive in practice if its order books are too thin.
That is where the $70,800 campaign makes strategic sense.
The rewards are not simply free money attached to a popular token. They are a mechanism for generating activity during the earliest weeks of a new derivatives market.
The structure is particularly revealing.
The 20,000 USDT lucky draw rewarded HYPE-specific activity, encouraging traders to try the new contracts. But the much larger 40,800 USDT leaderboard counted trading across all Bybit options.
That allowed Bybit to use HYPE as the marketing hook while simultaneously increasing activity across its broader options franchise.
It is also notable that Bybit did not stop with a one-month launch campaign. HYPE remains included in the separate short-dated-options fee discount running through the end of September. In other words, the direct prize pool disappears, but another financial incentive remains.
There is a reason exchanges care this much about building options liquidity.
Perpetual futures have long dominated crypto derivatives because they are simple to understand and easy to trade. Options attract a different layer of activity: volatility trading, hedging, structured positions and more sophisticated institutional strategies.
For Bybit, expanding beyond BTC and ETH options into assets such as HYPE can make its derivatives platform harder for active traders to replace.
But the incentives also complicate any attempt to judge organic demand.
A month in which users can receive vouchers, lucky-draw entries and leaderboard rewards does not necessarily tell investors how much HYPE options volume would exist without subsidies. The real test begins after the campaign disappears.
That is why Sept. 6 matters more than the $70,800 headline.
Bybit has spent a month paying users to help establish a new HYPE options market. Now it gets to see how many of them continue trading when the largest dedicated rewards are gone.
There is a broader competitive irony here as well.
Hyperliquid proved that an on-chain platform could take meaningful derivatives activity away from centralized venues. Centralized exchanges are responding partly by listing Hyperliquid’s own token, offering leverage on it and creating increasingly sophisticated products around it.
The competition is therefore no longer simply Bybit versus Hyperliquid for the same perpetual trader.
Bybit is trying to turn enthusiasm for Hyperliquid itself into another reason to trade on Bybit.
The end of the $70,800 promotion will provide a cleaner indication of whether that strategy created a lasting market or merely a month of incentivized volume.