Intercontinental Exchange demands regulatory parity for round-the-clock blockchain perpetual contracts
The chief executive of ICE is calling on regulatory authorities to establish equal market conditions for 24/7 blockchain-based perpetual contracts, a product currently available on platforms like Hyperliquid.
The parent organization of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), Intercontinental Exchange, is calling on regulatory bodies to permit regulated trading venues to provide round-the-clock onchain perpetual futures trading capabilities, as stated by Jeffrey Sprecher, the Chief Executive Officer of ICE.
During his appearance at a Bernstein conference on Wednesday, Sprecher expressed that he has been advocating for regulators to establish equal competitive conditions for introducing 24/7 onchain perpetual contracts, contending that regulatory authorities are "prohibiting us from doing this when it's already happening."
The Chief Executive revealed that ICE has engaged in several preliminary conversations with the decentralized trading platform Hyperliquid regarding the potential collaborative benefits between the cryptocurrency sector and traditional finance (TradFi) markets, with ICE aiming to "learn" additional information about onchain perpetual contracts.
These statements represent the most recent evidence of how traditional finance enterprises are investigating methods to facilitate continuous trading for equities and commodities through blockchain infrastructure, in the wake of Hyperliquid's achievements.
These statements follow OKX's announcement from one week prior regarding its plans to launch perpetual futures contracts based on ICE's Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude benchmarks, which represent two of the globe's most extensively utilized oil pricing references, as Cointelegraph reported on May 22.
These trading instruments represent the initial initiative disclosed under an expanded collaboration between ICE and OKX, following ICE's investment in the digital currency exchange at a $25 billion valuation during March.
During March as well, the NYSE established a partnership with blockchain tokenization platform Securitize as component of an extensive initiative to build blockchain-powered stock trading systems with continuous trading and settlement capabilities for Wall Street.
Cointelegraph has reached out to ICE requesting commentary regarding whether the exchange operator had intentions to establish an onchain perpetual contracts trading platform through Hyperliquid.
Hyperliquid is "bigger than Nasdaq," says ICE CEO
Sprecher commended Hyperliquid's exceptional expansion as a trading venue, which enabled the emergence of several new billionaires, the CEO stated, further noting:
"If you haven't heard about it, it's bigger than Nasdaq, okay? It's 11 people."
Hyperliquid continues to be substantially smaller than Nasdaq when evaluated by traditional trading volume metrics, however Sprecher's statement highlighted the competitive pressure that continuously operating cryptocurrency derivatives platforms are exerting on regulated trading venues.
Hyperliquid holds the position as the 7th largest decentralized trading platform according to CoinGecko rankings, commanding a 3.7% market share and processing $195 million in daily trading volume.
The platform holds the fourth position among the highest fee-generating protocols within the cryptocurrency sector, producing $15.6 million in weekly fees over the preceding seven-day period, according to data from DefiLlama.
Hyperliquid has been broadening its feature set and most recently introduced canonical prediction markets for offchain events, as Cointelegraph reported on Tuesday.
The expanding capabilities of the platform are establishing Hyperliquid as the cryptocurrency sector's forthcoming "super-app," rendering the Hyperliquid (HYPE) token "one of the most mispriced assets in crypto today," given that investors continue to assess it merely as a perpetual contracts DEX, according to Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at cryptocurrency asset management firm Bitwise.