NYSE Parent Isn't 'Freaked Out' by Hyperliquid—It's Learning From the Crypto Perps Giant

Hyperliquid has become a wake-up call for traditional markets, prompting discussions with the crypto venue, studying its 24/7 model, and asking regulators whether U.S. exchanges can offer similar perpetual futures under clear rules.

That’s according to Jeffrey Sprecher, founder, chairman and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange, who spoke at a fireside chat during Bernstein’s 42nd Annual Strategic Decisions Conference on Wednesday.

“We’re not freaked out about it,” Sprecher said, referring to Hyperliquid. “We’re actually talking to these people and learning about it. They’re learning what we’re doing. We’re helping them understand our world. They’re helping us understand their world.”

Hyperliquid is a crypto platform where traders can bet on price moves around the clock, outside of the normal Wall Street system. Perpetual futures, often called perps for short, are contracts that let traders bet on where a price is headed without an expiry date.

For Sprecher, the issue is whether regulated exchanges can offer products comparable to the perpetual futures already trading on crypto platforms. ICE, which owns the New York Stock Exchange, has asked regulators why traditional venues are restricted from offering similar products, he said.

"But what we are saying to the regulators is: Can we do that?" Sprecher said. "Like, why are you prohibiting us from doing this when it's already happening? And can't we have a level playing field?"

Just two days later, we’re already seeing the gap close. On Friday, the CFTC issued an order allowing Kalshi to offer Bitcoin perpetual futures, a move that appears to bring part of the market Sprecher described closer to regulated U.S. venues.

Coinbase, a publicly traded U.S. crypto exchange, also announced Friday that it can now connect U.S. institutional clients to global crypto options and perpetual futures liquidity through its CFTC-regulated futures business.

On Wednesday, Sprecher pointed to SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company, as a near-term test of whether prices formed on crypto trading venues can matter before a company lists publicly

Market participants and regulators would be watching whether a derivative price linked to SpaceX formed before the IPO proves irrelevant or becomes a reference point for the listing, he added.

Traders are already using perpetual futures to bet on SpaceX’s expected listing price months before a potential IPO, with those contracts averaging nearly $18 million in daily volume over two weeks, according to Bloomberg.

Interest in SpaceX has also grown alongside reports that Musk has discussed folding the rocket firm together with Tesla, a move that could place more than $2.2 billion worth of Bitcoin under one corporate roof.

A changing game

Such discussions suggest price discovery for companies such as SpaceX is “increasingly happening on crypto rails” before a bank syndicate files their IPO paperwork, Ultan Miller, CEO of private markets infrastructure firm Hecto Finance, told Decrypt.

“Perpetuals are not the only tool in that shift, but they are an important signal of where marginal views on value are being expressed and hedged in real time,” Miller said. Regulators should focus on giving that activity a “clear, technology neutral home onshore” so it can improve transparency in “notoriously opaque private markets,” he added.

ICE’s talks with Hyperliquid show Wall Street is taking on-chain derivatives more seriously, Fernando Lillo, marketing director at crypto trading platform Zoomex, told Decrypt.

Access to companies such as SpaceX before they go public has long been “a venture capitalists’ and institutional elites’ game,” Lillo said.

Traditional firms once treated crypto derivatives platforms as “unregulated shadow markets,” he said—but now, Hyperliquid points to an “on-chain architecture validation” and “retail-driven pre-IPO markets.”

Sprecher is making a “pragmatic” case to regulators, Lillo said: “If the demand exists and the technology works, let us host it safely in a regulated environment before we lose the market entirely to offshore entities.”

That demand is already showing up on crypto platforms. For now, the door to Bitcoin perps is open, but products outside it still need to undergo a “case-by-case” review process, the CFTC said.