The Hyperliquid Policy Center has urged the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission to create one shared regulatory framework for perpetual contracts, arguing that oversight should depend on a product’s economic design rather than the asset it tracks.
In a comment letter published Monday, the group said perpetual contracts linked to Bitcoin, stocks, commodities, currencies and exchange-traded funds can share the same core trading mechanics. Treating them differently solely because of the underlying reference asset, it argued, creates uncertainty over which regulator and which type of registered venue can list them.
The proposal places Hyperliquid’s rapidly growing multi-asset perpetual markets at the center of a long-running U.S. jurisdictional dispute. Perpetual contracts, often called perps, are derivatives designed to track an underlying asset without a fixed expiry date. They have become a major product in offshore crypto markets and are now moving closer to regulated U.S. venues.
A shared structure for SEC and CFTC oversight
The Policy Center pointed to the existing “security futures” category as a possible model. Security futures are products that combine features of securities and futures markets, giving both the SEC and CFTC roles in their oversight.
Under the current structure, an exchange or intermediary primarily registered with one regulator can use notice registration to register with the other agency for the purpose of offering security futures. The letter said this arrangement places SEC- and CFTC-regulated venues within the same product category, rather than locking each market operator into a separate asset-based regime.
Hyperliquid’s policy group argued that a comparable approach could be updated for perpetual contracts. A stock-linked perpetual and a Bitcoin-linked perpetual may raise different issues around market data, underlying liquidity and reference pricing, but their leverage, margining, funding mechanisms and liquidation processes can be closely related.
The letter described the security futures regime as “commercially dormant for many years,” while noting that U.S. venues returned to the category this summer. It said the framework needs modernization to accommodate newer derivative structures that do not fit neatly into older divisions between securities and commodities.
A common classification would reduce the risk that the legal status of a product turns on the identity of its reference asset. It would also give exchanges clearer grounds to develop similar products across asset classes without facing separate and potentially conflicting listing standards.
Perpetuals move beyond crypto markets
Hyperliquid’s proposal arrives as perpetual contracts spread into markets traditionally served by established futures exchanges, securities brokers and derivatives clearing systems.
The platform lists perpetual markets tied to Bitcoin, Ether, oil, gold, currencies, stock indexes, individual equities and ETFs, according to the letter. That range has made the venue a test case for whether crypto-native trading infrastructure can support products that resemble derivatives available in conventional financial markets.
Hyperliquid said its HIP-3 markets generated more than $480 billion in trading volume in the 10 months since launch and held approximately $4 billion in open interest, the value of outstanding derivative positions. The letter also said Hyperliquid processed nearly $3 trillion in notional trading volume during 2025 and more than $1.5 trillion so far this year.
Notional volume measures the face value of trades rather than the amount of collateral posted by users, making it a useful indicator of activity but not a direct measure of capital committed to the platform. Even so, the figures illustrate why the policy question has drawn attention beyond crypto trading circles.
A regulatory category that spans multiple underlying assets could place onchain perpetual venues in more direct competition with traditional exchanges on execution speed, liquidity, fees and market quality. The Policy Center said a unified framework would move competition toward those factors rather than toward legal uncertainty over which venue is permitted to list a particular contract.
Traditional exchanges raise market-integrity concerns
The expansion has also prompted resistance from established derivatives operators. CME Group and Intercontinental Exchange have raised concerns in news reports that platforms such as Hyperliquid could be used to manipulate or distort prices, while calling for the platform to be registered with the CFTC.
Those concerns reflect a central challenge for regulators: perpetual contracts may trade continuously, rely on reference-price indexes and use automated liquidation systems that differ sharply from the structure of conventional listed futures markets. A shared legal category would not resolve questions around surveillance, customer protections, clearing, margin requirements or price-index governance. It would establish which regulatory pathways apply before those rules are negotiated product by product.
CME also sued the CFTC in June over the agency’s decision to permit perpetual futures trading in the United States after approving the first such products for Coinbase and Kalshi, according to the supplied material. The dispute illustrates how quickly product approvals can become arguments over whether regulators are applying comparable standards to competing venues.
Hyperliquid’s letter warned that without a clear taxonomy, disputes over which registrants can list a particular perpetual product could ultimately be decided through litigation. That would leave exchanges, market makers and users facing uncertainty while courts address questions that could instead be settled through rulemaking.
Federal attention adds pressure to the debate
President Donald Trump added to the political attention surrounding the issue last week when he referenced Hyperliquid and said the CFTC was working to bring the platform into the United States in a “fully compliant and legal fashion,” according to the supplied material.
The statement does not itself alter the registration requirements facing any platform or perpetual product. It adds visibility to a policy debate in which the SEC and CFTC must decide whether existing securities and commodities categories can accommodate multi-asset, continuously traded derivatives.
Hyperliquid’s proposal favors a framework that begins with how perpetual contracts operate and then applies safeguards suited to the markets they reference. That approach would give U.S. regulators a route to address crypto-linked and traditional-asset perpetuals within the same basic structure, while leaving them room to impose stricter requirements where an underlying market warrants them.
For deeper insight into evolving US oversight, explore how crypto regulation in the US could develop next.
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