NYSE Owner ICE Strikes Deal to Bring Hyperliquid Perpetual Futures to the US, Sending HYPE Higher

Intercontinental Exchange, the company that owns the New York Stock Exchange, has signed a definitive agreement with Trade[XYZ] to bring Hyperliquid-based perpetual futures to the United States. The deal was announced on Thursday, 29 October, and still needs regulatory approval.

Even so, it is the clearest sign yet that Wall Street wants a piece of crypto's favourite trading product. Hyperliquid's HYPE token jumped about 15% on the news, The Block reported, and kept rising on Friday while the rest of the market slid.

What ICE and Trade[XYZ] agreed

Under the agreement, ICE becomes the exclusive operator of Trade[XYZ]'s regulated markets and will build a new, dedicated market and clearing structure for them, according to ICE's press release. ICE is also making a strategic investment in Trade[XYZ]. Terms were not disclosed.

The work is split three ways. Trade[XYZ] designs the contracts, Hyperliquid supplies the underlying technology through its HIP-3 framework, and ICE runs the regulated exchange and clearing, The Block reported. CoinDesk said the venue would be branded ICE[XYZ].

The planned markets would cover crypto, equities, indices, commodities and foreign exchange. Once approvals are in place, customers who have passed KYC and anti-money-laundering checks would reach them through futures commission merchants (FCMs) that join the platform, ICE said.

ICE also expects to sell the products through its joint venture with OKX, the exchange it invested in earlier this year. That channel depends on the joint venture's own pending approvals as a US broker-dealer and FCM.

Why perps, and why now

A perpetual future is a derivative with no expiry date. Instead of locking in a price for a future day, it gives traders short-term, usually leveraged exposure to a market for as long as they hold the position. If that sounds different from simply buying a coin, our guide to spot vs futures crypto walks through what you own and what you risk.

Perps dominate crypto trading, but as CoinDesk pointed out, they are mostly traded on offshore venues that US investors cannot use. ICE is aiming the new market squarely at those traders.

"We've seen a clear increase in retail participation in markets, and that participation is becoming far more global, with retail traders increasingly seeking short-duration exposure, often around the clock," ICE chair and CEO Jeffrey Sprecher said. "We see these perp markets as additive to our futures markets, not a replacement for them."

ICE says its business today is more than 99% institutional, so retail is genuinely new territory. That is why the retail perps will sit in a separate clearing structure: ICE says its commercial hedgers will bear no exposure to the trading or counterparty risk of retail traders on the new platform.

Trade[XYZ]'s fast rise on Hyperliquid

Trade[XYZ] is the largest builder of markets on Hyperliquid, according to CoinDesk, and it says those markets have topped $650 billion in volume in just over a year. It secured a licence for the first official S&P 500 perpetual in March.

Builder-deployed markets now drive roughly half of Hyperliquid's volume, CoinDesk reported. They let traders bet on stocks, indices and commodities at any hour, and open interest in Hyperliquid's HIP-3 markets reached $2.38 billion in April, according to The Block. We followed that growth earlier this year in our report on HIP-3 perpetual futures.

Trade[XYZ] will keep running its existing offshore markets on Hyperliquid alongside the planned US venue. It said it will share details on products, eligibility and timing as approvals progress.

"ICE brings the regulatory, technological and market expertise to help us realize that ambition in America," Trade[XYZ] said in the joint release.

HYPE rallies while the market bleeds

HYPE traded around $91.21 on Thursday after its 15% jump, The Block reported, not far from the all-time high of $97.96 it hit last month.

The rally held on Friday. CNBC reported HYPE up 9% at $92.67, defying a broad sell-off that pushed bitcoin down 4% to $77,465.05 after Binance confirmed a $6.3 billion hack.

The news also moved the closest stock-market proxy. Shares of Hyperliquid Strategies (PURR), a company that invests in HYPE, surged 19% on Thursday to their highest level in three weeks, CNBC reported. More than 111,000 PURR options traded, over six times the 30-day average, and the flow leaned heavily towards calls.

"ICE is a cornerstone of traditional finance and the ideal partner," Hyperliquid Strategies CEO David Schamis told CNBC.

Druckenmiller breaks his silence on X

The deal also drew an unusual endorsement. Billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller posted on X for the first time to back the news, The Block reported.

"I am excited to be an investor in trade(xyz) as they partner with ICE to bring 24/7 perpetual futures on Hyperliquid to the United States," he wrote, adding that he looks forward to using the product in his own investing. His representatives confirmed the statement to the Financial Times, according to CNBC.

CoinDesk said Druckenmiller is among a small group of backers joining the project.

The regulatory road ahead

Nothing launches until regulators sign off. The plan is subject to approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and ICE said it will seek the approvals needed for the new market and clearing structure, including those required to support leveraged trading.

The ground has been moving in its favour. The CFTC issued a staff advisory and no-action relief in May that cleared the way for perps to come to the US, The Block reported. President Donald Trump has also mentioned the CFTC's effort to bring Hyperliquid into the US in a "fully compliant and legal fashion."

It is a striking shift. Sprecher had previously framed ICE's interest around a level regulatory playing field for onchain perpetuals, according to The Block, and we covered the earlier tension when Hyperliquid defended its on-chain transparency as ICE and CME pushed for CFTC oversight. Now ICE has chosen to build on Hyperliquid instead.

What happens next

Timing and eligibility have not been announced, CoinDesk reported. ICE says its minority stake in Trade[XYZ] is not expected to have a material impact on its 2026 adjusted financial results.

The checklist from here is short: progress with the CFTC, approval of the ICE-OKX joint venture's broker-dealer and FCM units, and which brokers sign up as members. ICE has moved like this before, too. It agreed last October to invest up to $2 billion in Polymarket, CoinDesk noted.

For traders, the direction matters more than the date. Crypto's most popular derivative is heading for a regulated US home, and the operator of the New York Stock Exchange has decided to build it on a decentralized exchange's rails.