The Washington, D.C.-based policy team for decentralized exchange HyperLiquid (HYPE) has moved quickly to address a new regulatory pressure campaign described in a Friday report from Bloomberg.
CME Group and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) are reportedly lobbying the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and US lawmakers to push for federal oversight of the platform, arguing that its current operating environment could be vulnerable to issues such as market manipulation and sanctions evasion.
CME and ICE urge Hyperliquid CFTC registration
Concerns of exchanges, as described in reportingHyperliquid focuses on how trades take place and where those trades take place. CME and ICE are reportedly concerned that the platform’s growing trading volume in crypto and commodity-linked markets could begin to impact price discovery in industries where benchmarks matter, including oil.
They argue that anonymous trading settings may allow actors with private information or insiders or participants with state-linked influence to distort the prices used in the markets.
According to Bloomberg, CME and ICE have a clear question: HyperLiquid must register with the CFTC. That registration will generally require the platform to adopt a customer identification program and implement trade monitoring measures.
However, those requirements seem to conflict with Hyperliquid’s current approach, which relies on a anonymous trading model By design.
In response, the Hyperliquid Policy Center (HPC), led by CEO Jake Chervisanki, publicly pushed back. On social media site X (formerly Twitter), the recently founded organization confirmed that the criticisms are “baseless.”
‘Anti-manipulation shield’
HPC argued HyperLiquid offers a higher level of transparency than traditional venues because it publishes the complete on-chain record of every transaction in real time.
In the policy center’s view, that level of visibility creates a hostile environment for insider trading or price manipulation, while also giving regulators and law enforcement clear material to monitor, detect, and investigate.
The policy center also emphasized that HyperLiquid runs 24/7 trading, describing it as an efficiency upgrade rather than a disruption. Because trading is continuous, prices still vary traditional exchange are closed, thereby reducing the lag and discontinuity that occurs between traditional market sessions.
The Hyperliquid Policy Center also said Bloomberg is broadly right about one key point: U.S. law is not yet consistent with derivatives markets running on public blockchains like Hyperliquid. The group said it plans to continue working with policymakers in Washington to bring on-chain markets within the regulatory perimeter.
Other reporting including A Piece By The Defiant, the lobbying move has been described as potentially selfish. The report notes that CME is expanding its 24/7 crypto trading capabilities, including Bitcoin volatility futures set to begin trading on June 1 and Nasdaq CME crypto index futures covering BTC, ETH, XRP, and other assets, set to launch on June 8.
At the time of writing, Hyperliquid’s native token, HYPE, was trading at $44.60. This represented gains of 1.6% and nearly 4% on the 24-hour and seven-day time frames, respectively.
Featured image created with OpenArt, chart from tradingview.com
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