HYPE climbed 26.86% over 24 hours to $73.90, placing the token within roughly $3 of its recent peak near $76.50 after nearly two months of range-bound trading and declines. The rally followed comments from U.S. President Donald Trump that Michael Selig, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, was working on a path for Hyperliquid to enter the U.S. market “in a fully compliant and lawful way.”
The comments arrived shortly after a policy submission linked to Hyperliquid proposed a regulated framework for trading perpetual contracts tied to companies before their initial public offerings. The proposal places Hyperliquid’s on-chain derivatives infrastructure within an emerging U.S. debate over how digital trading venues could offer stock-linked products without crossing into unregistered securities activity.
On Aug. 18, the Hyperliquid Policy Center and trade.xyz sent a comment letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission responding to the agency’s IPO modernization initiative. The groups asked the SEC to include “IPO pre-market perpetuals,” or IPOP, in reforms to the U.S. listing process.
IPOP contracts would give traders exposure to a company’s implied pre-listing valuation without conferring ownership in that company. According to the letter, the contracts would not represent equity, voting rights, dividends, or any other shareholder entitlement. Their pre-IPO function would end once the underlying company completed a public listing.
Proposal targets pre-IPO price discovery
The submission presents IPOP markets as a form of price discovery before a conventional public listing, a role generally handled through private financing rounds, investment-bank discussions, and the IPO book-building process. Under the proposed model, a perpetual contract could trade continuously on an open blockchain network while remaining separate from the issuer’s stock.
The distinction is central to the proposal’s legal argument. A contract referencing a private company’s anticipated valuation could raise questions under both securities and commodities rules, particularly if it is offered to U.S. retail customers. The letter therefore asks agencies to set explicit classifications for stock-linked perpetual contracts rather than leave platforms to infer their status from existing rules.
The Hyperliquid Policy Center and trade.xyz asked regulators to address several areas, including disclosures, listing requirements, protections against market manipulation, leverage caps, and position-size limits. They also proposed a framework that could permit U.S. retail participation if the products were offered through approved channels with appropriate safeguards.
The request follows a May 26 proposal by SEC Chair Paul Atkins, identified in the filing as CLL-16, which sought public feedback on possible changes to IPO and listing rules. Hyperliquid’s submission attempts to connect decentralized perpetual markets to that consultation rather than treating them solely as a cryptocurrency issue.
trade.xyz cites five existing markets
Trade.xyz said in the letter that it has operated five IPOP markets on Hyperliquid. The examples named in the submission include Cerebras, SpaceX, SK Hynix, and ChangXin Memory Technologies, though the letter did not describe the full terms or trading history of each market.
The group said prices in certain pre-listing markets had tracked relatively close to the companies’ opening prices once they began public trading. That claim is likely to draw scrutiny from regulators, since a pre-IPO contract can be highly sensitive to limited information, rumors, and abrupt changes in a company’s listing plans.
Pre-market contracts linked to private companies also pose a more complex challenge than perpetuals tied to widely traded assets. A token or commodity with a deep spot market provides a visible reference price. Private companies may disclose little financial data, and their expected IPO valuation can change sharply based on financing conditions, lockups, share allocations, or a delayed listing.
Those risks explain why the letter’s emphasis on disclosure and trading limits may matter as much as its request for market access. A U.S.-compliant version would likely require a clearer standard for which companies qualify, what information market operators must provide, and how they would handle a canceled or indefinitely postponed IPO.
Regulatory route remains undefined
Selig had also said on Aug. 14 that the CFTC’s Innovation Advisory Committee would hold its first meeting in Washington on Aug. 20. The agenda includes crypto-asset regulation, artificial intelligence, and prediction markets, and the session was scheduled to be streamed on the CFTC’s website.
According to the account of the White House meeting, Selig said additional details on prospective regulatory pathways would be shared during that session. No final framework for Hyperliquid or stock-linked perpetual contracts was included in the information provided.
The policy effort has been developing through direct engagement with U.S. regulators. On July 14, representatives of the Hyperliquid Policy Center, trade.xyz, and law firm Sullivan & Cromwell met the SEC’s crypto task force to present the Hyperliquid protocol, its technology, and the HIP-3 market structure, according to the timeline cited in the article.
HIP-3 is relevant because it is designed to allow permissionless deployment of perpetual futures markets under Hyperliquid’s infrastructure. That flexibility has helped make decentralized derivatives platforms attractive to traders, but it also creates compliance questions when contracts reference equities, indices, or private companies with a substantial U.S. connection.
Earlier, S&P Dow Jones Indices authorized trade.xyz in March to use the S&P 500 Index for an on-chain perpetual product available to eligible non-U.S. participants, according to the submission. The authorization addressed index licensing, not permission to market the product to U.S. customers.
U.S. access would likely require regulated intermediaries
Three possible routes have been outlined for a U.S. launch. One would involve a partnership with a licensed designated contract market, futures commission merchant, or clearing organization. In that arrangement, the regulated entity could manage customer identification, reporting, custody standards, and customer protections while Hyperliquid supplied blockchain-based execution or settlement functions.
A second option would involve listing Hyperliquid-related products or assets through an existing regulated U.S. platform. A third route would be to acquire or rebuild a platform designed specifically for U.S. compliance. Each approach would require decisions on product classification, supervision, leverage, and the treatment of decentralized governance.
The article estimated that preparations could take between three and 12 months, though the timeline would depend heavily on regulators’ response and on the structure selected. A partnership model could be faster than building a fully regulated operation from scratch, but it could also limit the permissionless features that distinguish Hyperliquid from conventional derivatives venues.
Hyperliquid’s network has already reached $6 billion in locked funds and recorded daily trading volume of $32 billion earlier this year, according to figures cited in the article. Those figures show why U.S. regulators are being asked to address the platform’s model before stock-linked perpetuals become more widely used.
For HYPE traders, the immediate catalyst is the prospect of a regulated U.S. pathway rather than a completed market entry. The SEC’s treatment of the IPOP proposal and any guidance emerging from the CFTC advisory process will determine whether that prospect develops into an approved product structure or remains an offshore experiment.
Curious how tokenized stocks and IPOP-style products might evolve? Explore tokenized equities and their regulatory future.
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