CME, ICE urge U.S. action on Hyperliquid’s 24/7 oil perps

CME Group and Intercontinental Exchange have asked U.S. regulators to restrict activities at offshore crypto venue Hyperliquid, saying the platform’s anonymous, always-open oil perpetual contracts pose risks for price integrity, market manipulation and sanctions evasion. The exchanges raised the concerns as they build their own continuous trading products.

CME plans to operate cryptocurrency futures and options around the clock beginning May 29. That product line posted about $3 trillion in notional volume in 2025 and is running roughly 46% ahead of last year’s pace so far this year. ICE’s New York Stock Exchange is developing a tokenized securities platform designed for continuous operation, instant settlement, single-dollar orders and stablecoin-based funding, pending regulatory approvals. Both firms have invested capital and infrastructure to replicate always-open market structures.

Hyperliquid operates a fully on-chain order book on its layer-1 blockchain. The platform settles trades and liquidations with one-block finality and allows permissionless creation of perpetual markets with customizable oracles, leverage limits and settlement rules. Data show the venue recorded about $176.4 billion in 30-day perpetual volume, $7.9 billion in 24-hour perpetual volume and $9.3 billion in open interest, annualizing to roughly $2.15 trillion. It accounted for about 31.7% of 30-day on-chain perp DEX volume and 58.5% of perp DEX open interest in the measured period.

Exchanges pointed to recent reviews of large, well-timed trades on regulated platforms. U.S. regulators reviewed trades placed on CME and ICE around major Iran-policy announcements and identified an approximately $950 million position established hours before a ceasefire announcement and about a $500 million position placed shortly before another policy statement. Representative Ritchie Torres asked the SEC and CFTC to investigate the $950 million trade, citing its timing.

CFTC rules require designated contract markets to run automated surveillance, real-time monitoring and maintain audit trails that can reconstruct every trade. Enforcement records include a 2020 CFTC order requiring JPMorgan to pay $920.2 million for spoofing and manipulation in precious metals and Treasury futures, and actions against several major commodity traders over the past decade.

CME and ICE told regulators that Hyperliquid’s pseudonymous participants and permissionless market creation limit comparable automated oversight and post-trade investigation. If regulators act on that view, oil-linked perpetual contracts on Hyperliquid could face access restrictions, new oracle-disclosure requirements or geofencing by front-end providers.

Under one set of projections, such restrictions could reduce Hyperliquid’s 30-day perpetual volume to between about $75 billion and $125 billion and shrink open interest, shifting some institutional flows toward regulated 24/7 futures. An alternative projection places Hyperliquid’s 30-day volume between $225 billion and $325 billion if enforcement is limited to commodity-linked markets or onshore platforms are judged similarly vulnerable.

The submissions from CME and ICE ask U.S. authorities to apply market-integrity rules to anonymous, on-chain perpetuals tied to commodities and to decide how surveillance, access and disclosure requirements should apply to continuous markets for commodity-linked contracts.