Key Highlights
- ICE and CME reportedly urged U.S. regulators to scrutinize Hyperliquid’s oil perpetual markets.
- Concerns include anonymous trading, benchmark manipulation, and sanctions evasion risks.
- Hyperliquid defended its transparency, citing publicly verifiable on-chain transactions.
Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) and CME Group, the financial exchanges, are urging the United States government to clamp down on Hyperliquid, a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange based out of Singapore, citing their potential threat to manipulate global oil markets, as reported by Bloomberg.
According to the Bloomberg report, the exchanges have alarmed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and Capitol Hill about the anonymous trading system at Hyperliquid. Informed sources say that the company’s failure to identify its customers poses dangers of insider trading and sanction-evading activities by states.
According to traditional exchanges, unregulated operations of Hyperliquid could adversely affect the credibility of benchmarks followed by global oil companies and their customers for pricing purposes. Prices determined by Hyperliquid have become important in determining opening prices on futures markets.
Growth amid Iran war
The oil-indexed perpetual future contracts offered by Hyperliquid experienced rapid growth in April amid heightened conflict surrounding Iran. On average, there was a daily turnover exceeding $700 million, which was a significant jump from just a few million dollars daily prior to the conflict, as reported by Artemis.
ICE and CME have been pushing for Hyperliquid to become registered with the CFTC, which means that certain requirements will apply, including customer identification, trade surveillance, and market oversight.
According to Trabue Bland, senior vice president for futures at ICE, “It’s all about benchmark integrity.” “If there’s something that could impact that, completely outside of anyone’s oversight, I think that’s problematic,” Bland stated.
CFTC Chairman Michael Selig recently acknowledged the platform’s potential influence, noting that Hyperliquid “could end up influencing the spot market price or the futures market price on our registered platforms.”
The Hyperliquid project defended their strategy and pointed out that all transactions on the blockchain were transparent. “Every trade, every liquidation, and every funding payment is publicly verifiable in a way that no traditional exchange can match,” said George Godsal, a spokesman for the platform’s developers.
HYPE token price context
At the time of this writing, price of HYPE is $43.97, having increased by 1.65% over the past 24 hours due to strong momentum, according to CoinMarketCap. HYPE saw an impressive spike in its 24-hour trading volume at 105%, hitting a volume of $841 million, while the market cap stood at $11.19 billion.
The HYPE price was trading sideways for a couple of weeks but has seen a sharp breakout in the past 24 hours, rallying from its lowest price of $42.84 to an intraday high of $46.95.
Another development notes that Hyperliquid is discontinuing the usage of its own stablecoin, USDH, which had been launched only seven months ago in September 2025. Introduced through a governance vote by Native Markets, USDH was a yield-bearing Hyperliquid dollar stablecoin that sought to limit the reliance on other stablecoins and benefit HYPE holders.
Balance between innovation and market integrity
These advances follow a crackdown by American regulators on any suspicious activities in the buying and selling of oil, whether conducted through legacy or new venues.
Hyperliquid is expected to generate over $1 billion in earnings for this year after venturing beyond crypto and into other assets, while ICE and CME both raked in more than $5 billion in earnings last year through their existing operations. The bottom line is that the whole discussion boils down to striking a balance between innovation and market integrity.
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