ICE Chair Says NYSE Parent Has Held Multiple Talks With Hyperliquid as Wall Street Reassesses Onchain Perpetuals

ICE Chair Jeff Sprecher told a Bernstein conference his company has met multiple times with Hyperliquid, calling the 11-person platform “bigger than Nasdaq” two weeks after pressing regulators to rein it in.

Jeffrey Sprecher, chair and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, revealed at the Bernstein 42nd Annual Strategic Decisions Conference in New York Wednesday that ICE has held multiple meetings with Hyperliquid to evaluate the onchain perpetual futures market. Sprecher described the 11-person decentralized exchange as bigger than Nasdaq, an unusually direct acknowledgment from one of the most powerful figures in regulated derivatives markets.

The disclosure marks a notable pivot. Two weeks ago, Bloomberg reported that ICE and CME Group had been pressing US regulators to “rein in” Hyperliquid over what the legacy exchanges called market manipulation and sanctions evasion risks, particularly in oil and energy derivatives. The same week, ICE and OKX announced a partnership to launch perpetual Brent and WTI oil futures on the crypto exchange, an apparent attempt to capture some of the same 24/7 demand that has driven Hyperliquid‘s growth. ICE also took a $200 million minority stake in OKX in March.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

Sprecher‘s framing at Bernstein suggests ICE views Hyperliquid as both competition and a potential collaborator. The protocol now commands roughly 70% of decentralized perpetuals open interest with $8 billion in open interest, $2.6 trillion in cumulative trading volume since inception, and approximately $1.6 billion in 24-hour trading volume on a typical day. Grayscale named Hyperliquid “the breakout success story of modern crypto” this week, citing $2.9 trillion in 2025 perpetual futures volume that placed the platform third globally alongside Binance and Bybit.

The competitive landscape is shifting fast. HIP-3, Hyperliquid‘s permissionless perpetual market framework that lets anyone stake 500,000 HYPE to deploy new derivatives markets, has grown to over $2.5 billion in open interest in May, expanding into stocks, commodities, prediction markets, and pre-IPO equity derivatives. Spot HYPE ETFs from Bitwise and 21Shares have accumulated $100.48 million in net inflows since launching May 12, with single-day inflows peaking at $25.46 million on May 20.

For ICE, the question is no longer whether onchain perps matter but how to position. Sprecher‘s acknowledgment to a Bernstein audience that ICE has been meeting with Hyperliquid is the clearest signal yet that Wall Street’s largest derivatives venue is treating the protocol as a counterparty worth talking to, not just a regulatory target.