Perpetual contracts were raised in each of the three sessions at the CFTC’s inaugural Innovation Advisory Committee meeting on August 20 despite not appearing on the agenda, according to a statement filed with the Commission on Thursday by the Hyperliquid Policy Center, which says perpetual markets deployed through the HIP-3 framework have now accumulated more than $500 billion in notional trading volume across more than 80 markets.
The filing, signed by HPC chief executive Jake Chervinsky and senior counsel Brad Bourque, was submitted to Commission Secretary Christopher Kirkpatrick.
Who Raised What
The statement attributes specific interventions to named members, with timestamps in the meeting webcast.
Tyler Winklevoss of Gemini said perpetual contracts account for most global digital asset trading volume and that American firms have largely been unable to offer them, leaving US platforms at a disadvantage. Don Wilson of DRW described them as risk management tools that registered funds would benefit from holding alongside dated futures. Brian Armstrong of Coinbase raised perpetuals referencing equity securities, which sit across the CFTC’s jurisdiction and the SEC’s.
Tushar Jain of Multicoin Capital argued that perpetuals referencing private companies approaching public listings could give retail participants regulated exposure to growth now concentrated in private markets. Raghu Yarlagadda of FalconX raised data center investment, generating demand for instruments hedging compute costs.
That last point was answered by the Commission within a day. On August 21, the CFTC published a request for comment on the listing of compute derivatives contracts, asking directly whether perpetual compute futures would offer advantages over dated futures and provide commercial risk management features existing products cannot.
An Unprecedented Era of Competition
The filing relays figures from committee chair Walt Lukken of the FIA that describe the scale of change in the venues themselves.
The Commission regulated 16 designated contract markets in 2003. It regulates 30 today, with 17 further applications pending. The number of contracts traded under Commission regulation has grown from 2,100 in 2023 to 6,700.
HPC attributes that to clear registration pathways, principles-based oversight, and self-certification lowering barriers to entry, with new entrants competing by listing products incumbents left unserved.
Those numbers land in a contested moment. CME Group has sued the CFTC over its approval of perpetual futures, arguing the contracts are swaps rather than futures under Dodd-Frank, and Hyperliquid has cited figures putting CME at roughly 92% of the US exchange-traded derivatives market. Chervinsky has argued the suit exposed CME as a monopolist; CME’s outgoing chief executive Terry Duffy has called perpetuals a disaster waiting to happen.
The Case for the Product
HPC’s substantive argument is that perpetuals serve exposures dated futures that are left unmet.
The filing describes the funding rate as performing for a perpetual what expiration performs for a dated future: at regular intervals the trading price is compared against a reference price, and payments flow between longs and shorts in the direction that draws the two together. A dated contract achieves convergence once, at settlement; a perpetual maintains a continuous incentive toward it.
Many commercial exposures have no calendar end—the filing cites an airline’s fuel consumption, a fund’s portfolio exposure, and an AI developer’s compute costs. Hedging those with dated contracts requires managing a roll cycle across contract months, introducing timing and volatility risk at every roll.
HPC frames perpetuals as complements to dated futures rather than replacements, serving participants with continuous exposures while dated contracts continue to serve those whose risks align with fixed dates.
The Ask
The filing’s operative request concerns developers rather than products. HPC asks the Commission to confirm that developing or contributing to on-chain infrastructure, standing alone, does not trigger registration and to permit registrants to integrate those technologies so participants gain access through regulated channels.
It argues no rebuild of the Commodity Exchange Act is required. Registrants have long deployed third-party technology—matching engines, execution algorithms, and risk and margin engines—to perform regulated functions, and HPC positions public blockchains as the newest generation of that infrastructure. It points to the Chairman’s direction to staff to explore rules codifying digital asset market structure under existing authorities as proceeding from the same premise.
The organization says targeted guidance could accomplish most of the near-term work, covering execution and matching, margining and settlement, custody and segregation, system safeguards, and recordkeeping.
Where the Docket Stands
The Commission approved the first US-listed perpetual futures contract on a digital commodity in May, published a policy statement on listing perpetuals in June, and issued staff guidance on continuous trading.
Its comment period on extending perpetuals to physically delivered and storable energy commodities closed this week, with HPC filing jointly with trade[XYZ] on August 26. HPC filed separately on August 24 on the swap and security-based swap definitions and on August 7 urged the Commission to continue its phased review.
The political backdrop shifted the week of the meeting. President Trump said on August 19 that Chairman Michael Selig is working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States in a compliant fashion, sending HYPE up 23%. The following day, Duffy said perpetuals on Hyperliquid and Xtrade.xyz are illegal for US participants, and asked what the Commission is doing about VPN access.
