Jeffrey Sprecher, founder and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), called decentralized perpetual futures site Hyperliquid “bigger than NASDAQ” at a Bernstein conference this week and revealed that his team has met its founders several times, a sign that US exchanges are no longer treating crypto-native trading platforms as fringe.
“This Hyperliquid that we’re talking about, if you haven’t heard of it, it’s bigger than the NASDAQ, okay? It’s 11 people. If you look at it, you’re like, wow, that’s quite something,” Sprecher said in a May 27 fire chat with Bernstein analyst Chinedu Bolu, calling the team “very, very smart people.”
Hyperliquid’s HYPE token has a market cap of about $15.1 billion versus Nasdaq Inc.’s $50 billion as of Thursday, so the comparison doesn’t hold up relative to the company’s value.
However, on daily perpetual futures volumes, Hyperliquid clears billions of dollars in fictitious revenue and holds more than 70% of the decentralized perp-DEX market per industry data.
The “11 people” refers to Hyperliquid Labs, the core development unit, while the broader project draws on open source contributors and a validation set that runs the underlying Layer-1 blockchain.
Sprecher said ICE noticed, in part, that Hyperliquid has been trading oil derivatives over the weekend, when ICE’s traditional energy markets are closed, activity that spiked during the latest stretch of Middle East tensions.
JPMorgan analysts have flagged the same pattern, noting non-crypto traders using Hyperliquid’s 24/7 markets for after-hours oil exposure. “There’s been a lot of activity happening, a lot of decisions and things happening over the weekend. So it’s gotten a lot of interest,” Sprecher said.
Under US law, the perpetual futures offered by Hyperliquid are swaps subject to Title VII of the Dodd-Frank Act, the post-2008 legislation that mandates reporting, margining and dealer registration. ICE operates under these rules, while Hyperliquid, an unregulated foreign company, does not.
“Why are you banning us from doing this when it’s already happening? And can’t we have a level playing field? And by the way, this is global,” Sprecher said.
He said he expected the next few months to provide clearer answers, with the choice being either a new category of regulated perpetual futures or dragging offshore venues into Dodd-Frank and the EU’s EMIR rules.
