NYSE parent ICE held multiple talks with Hyperliquid to evaluate onchain perps market, CEO says

Jeffrey Sprecher, chair and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), said it is seeking a "level playing field" for onchain perpetual futures trading, amid recent reports that ICE and CME Group had urged the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to take a tougher stance on Hyperliquid.

During a fireside chat at a Bernstein conference on Wednesday, Sprecher said that ICE — the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange — has met the Hyperliquid team multiple times to discuss overlapping business areas, as 24/7 onchain commodities derivatives trading gains momentum globally.

Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that ICE and CME, a major energy exchange, have held conversations with Capitol Hill officials about the alleged risks in Hyperliquid, particularly involving global oil prices.

During the Wednesday talk, Sprecher said the reported conversations were more exploratory inquiries for ICE's potential entry into the onchain perps market, currently dominated by Hyperliquid.

"What we are saying to the regulators is, 'Can we do that?' Why are you prohibiting us from doing this when it's already happening? And can't we have a level playing field? And by the way, this stuff is global," said Sprecher.

"How do we square that circle? Because we'd like to do more of it if you think it's lawful," Sprecher added. "And if you don't think it's lawful, then how come they're not getting the same nasty letters that you send us?"

Potential opportunities

ICE is actively exploring where its existing businesses could intersect with the burgeoning onchain perpetuals market.

"We're not freaked out about it. We're actually talking to these people and learning about it," said Sprecher. "We're helping them understand our world. They're helping us understand their world. So in that sense, a joint admiration."

Hyperliquid has seen a significant surge in activity as non-crypto traders increasingly use its 24/7 markets to gain exposure to oil during weekends and traditional off-market hours, JPMorgan analysts previously noted.

"It just so happens in this time of conflict in the Middle East, there has been a lot of activity that happens, a lot of decisions and things happen on the weekend. So it's gotten a lot of interest," said Sprecher.

ICE is currently working with OKX to list oil perpetual contracts that track ICE's Brent Crude and WTI Crude energy benchmarks, as announced last week.

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How to regulate

The ICE chief said regulators are now facing difficult questions about how to oversee blockchain-based perpetual futures markets.

"The regulators have a choice to make," said Sprecher. "Do they create some new category of regulated perpetual futures? Or do they call them swaps and suck them into Dodd-Frank and EMIR in the EU and similar regulation in Japan?"

Hyperliquid Policy Center, a U.S.-based advocacy group, has argued that Hyperliquid offers a new model for market integrity and transparency. "Continuous trading eliminates gaps and discontinuities between legacy market hours, improving price discovery for all participants," it said earlier this month.

Sprecher also pointed to the upcoming SpaceX initial public offering, expected to price around June 11, as a potential test case for how markets evaluate onchain trading activity tied to private companies. Reuters said the IPO could become one of the largest public listings in history at a valuation of up to $1.75 trillion.

TradeXYZ, a platform built on Hyperliquid, has rolled out pre-IPO perpetual futures tied to companies including Elon Musk's SpaceX.

"It's going to be really interesting to watch on June 11 when SpaceX goes public, what this private market has discovered as the price and whether that price impacts the IPO," said Sprecher.

ICE has been expanding its presence in the crypto sector through a series of investments. The exchange operator invested in OKX at a $25 billion valuation, securing a seat on OKX's board. ICE has also backed prediction markets platform Polymarket, including a fresh $600 million investment announced in March.