Hyperliquid Surges 17% After NYSE Owner ICE Strikes Deal for Regulated US Perpetuals

Intercontinental Exchange agreed on Thursday to run a US-regulated version of Trade[XYZ]’s perpetual futures markets, sending Hyperliquid’s HYPE token up more than 15% in a day.

HYPE traded at US$92.94 (AU$132) at 5:18 a.m. UTC on Friday, according to CoinGecko. That gave it a market value of about US$22.3 billion (AU$31.7 billion), 10th on CoinGecko’s ranking. Its high over the previous 24 hours was US$96.70 (AU$137). 

ICE, which owns the New York Stock Exchange, holds exclusive rights to operate those regulated markets. It is also taking a minority stake in Trade[XYZ]. Trade[XYZ] runs round-the-clock perpetual markets on Hyperliquid tied to stocks, indices, commodities and currencies, open only to eligible users outside the US.

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Trade[XYZ] said a small group of prominent market figures is joining ICE as backers, starting with Stanley Druckenmiller. Druckenmiller confirmed his stake in a post on X later on Thursday. He said he expects to use the product himself to improve his investment process.

Traders also piled into Hyperliquid Strategies, the Nasdaq-listed company that holds HYPE as a treasury asset. Its shares closed up 23.27% at US$12.29 (AU$17.45) on Thursday, according to Nasdaq. More than 111,000 of its options changed hands, over six times the 30-day average, according to Cboe LiveVol data cited by CNBC. Calls, which profit from a rising share price, made up almost 86,000 of those contracts, against fewer than 27,000 puts.

“ICE is a cornerstone of traditional finance and the ideal partner,” Hyperliquid Strategies chief executive David Schamis told CNBC in a text message.

Approvals Still Needed

The US venue cannot open without approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. ICE said it will also seek the approvals needed to support leveraged trading. Customers who pass identity and anti-money-laundering checks would trade through futures commission merchants that join the platform. Neither ICE nor Trade[XYZ] has given a launch date for the venue.

Distribution would run partly through OKXICE, ICE’s joint venture with OKX, which still needs approval for its US broker-dealer and futures commission merchant subsidiaries. That venture also plans to trade tokenised US shares, and 22 companies had objected to tokenised trading of their stock there by 23 October.

President Donald Trump said on 19 August that CFTC chair Mike Selig was working to bring Hyperliquid into the US legally. Kraken parent Payward followed on 16 September with its own plan, after its talks with Hyperliquid Labs over US perpetual futures. It intends to run permissioned Hyperliquid markets for US clients through Bitnomial, its CFTC-regulated exchange, once regulators approve.

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