The Hyperliquid Policy Center has urged the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to create a common regulatory framework for perpetual contracts, arguing that products should be classified according to their economic structure rather than the asset they track.
In a comment letter published on Monday, the HPC said a harmonised approach could help bring the rapidly expanding perpetual-contract market onshore and reduce disputes over which regulator should oversee individual products.
Perpetual contracts are derivatives that do not have a fixed expiry date. Hyperliquid offers markets linked to a broad range of assets, including bitcoin, ether, oil, gold, currencies, stock indexes, individual stocks and ETFs.
The HPC said the existing framework for security futures was created for a product category that had been “commercially dormant for many years” and would need updating to reflect newer trading structures.
“Security futures are a product category that both Commissions oversee and that both SEC- and CFTC-registered exchanges can list. A registrant primarily regulated by one agency can cross over to the other through notice registration, so securities exchanges and futures exchanges may compete in the same product class,” the HPC wrote Monday in a post on X. “The product category has been commercially dormant for many years, though U.S. exchanges returned to it this summer, and its framework will need modernization for new product structures.”
The group argued that, without a clear taxonomy, disagreements about whether a particular product may be listed by an exchange registered with one agency or the other could ultimately be decided in court.
A unified framework would instead allow exchanges to compete on “execution quality and liquidity”, the HPC said.
The proposal comes as established exchanges challenge the growing presence of perpetual contracts in the US market. According to news reports, CME and ICE are among the traditional exchanges to have raised concerns that platforms such as Hyperliquid could be used to manipulate or distort prices. They also believe Hyperliquid should be registered with the CFTC.
In June, CME sued the CFTC over the regulator’s decision to allow perpetual futures to trade in the US. The legal action followed approval of the first such products for Coinbase and Kalshi.
Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 markets have recorded more than $480bn in trading volume since launching 10 months ago and currently have about $4bn in open interest, according to the HPC letter.
Overall, Hyperliquid handled nearly $3tn in notional trading volume in 2025 and more than $1.5tn so far this year.
The letter was published as Hyperliquid itself moved closer to the centre of the US regulatory debate. President Donald Trump referred to the platform last week, saying on Wednesday that the CFTC was working to bring the onchain perps exchange to the US in a “fully compliant and legal fashion”.
The HYPE token has risen by 40% since Trump’s comments, according to price data from The Block. It was trading at $77.71, down 3.93%, according to the same data.
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