ICE Urged Regulators to Probe Hyperliquid in the Spring, Now the NYSE's Owner Wants to Bring It to America

Earlier this year, the company that owns the New York Stock Exchange was reportedly urging US regulators to look into Hyperliquid over manipulation risks. On Thursday, it signed up to bring Hyperliquid's trading to Americans.

Intercontinental Exchange agreed to become the exclusive operator of regulated markets for Trade[XYZ], which offers 24/7 perpetual futures built on Hyperliquid, and took a strategic stake of undisclosed size. The plan still needs CFTC approval and has no launch date. HYPE, Hyperliquid's token, rose about 13% on the day.

From complaint to partnership

The turnaround took months. Bloomberg reported that ICE and CME had pressed regulators about Hyperliquid. About two weeks later, in May, ICE chair and chief executive Jeffrey Sprecher told Bernstein's Strategic Decisions Conference that ICE had met with Hyperliquid several times, and called it "bigger than NASDAQ."

Washington moved as well. In August, President Trump said CFTC Chair Mike Selig was working to bring Hyperliquid to the US. Selig's agency has been aggressive about defending its turf in other markets too, suing Utah to shield Kalshi and other regulated exchanges from state gambling laws. Hyperliquid itself remains closed to US users, and Kraken parent Payward has proposed a rival route through its Bitnomial exchange.

What ICE would actually run

The proposal is a separate US market with its own exchange and clearing infrastructure, built on Hyperliquid and running in parallel with the existing HIP-3 markets. Contracts would span equities, indices, commodities, currencies and crypto. Customers would pass KYC and AML checks and come in through futures commission merchants, and ICE plans distribution through its joint venture with OKX, which has approvals of its own pending. ICE bought into OKX at a $25 billion valuation in March.

ICE also plans to seek approval for leveraged trading. For a company that says more than 99% of its participation is institutional, a retail business is new ground, and it would run separately from the institutional franchise. Sprecher called perpetuals "additive to our futures markets, not a replacement for them."

Trade[XYZ] brings real volume. Its Hyperliquid markets passed $650 billion in just over a year, and S&P Dow Jones Indices licensed it the S&P 500 in March for a perpetual offered to non-US investors. "Until now, Americans could only watch. We intend to change that," the company wrote. It also has a famous name on the cap table: Stan Druckenmiller, who said on X he was "excited to be an investor" as Trade[XYZ] partners with ICE to bring the contracts to the United States.

Who gets paid

Traders bid HYPE from a daily open of $80.69 to a high of $92.10 on KuCoin, closing in on its September record near $98. The token was still near $90 on Friday afternoon.

The link between US trading and HYPE holders is less direct than that jump implies. Hyperliquid spends nearly all its trading fees buying HYPE on the open market and burning it. But Trade[XYZ]'s markets carry about 30% of Hyperliquid's trading and pay for only about 5% to 7% of the buyback. HIP-3 "growth mode" cuts protocol fees by 90%, with crypto perps and gold excluded. From 9 October to 29 October, the fund bought 436,765 HYPE for $35.5 million.

None of the announcements says how much Hyperliquid would earn from American trading. The exchange that once wanted regulators to take a look now needs those regulators to say yes, and details on products, eligibility and timing will only come as approvals progress.

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