White House backs CFTC move to onshore Hyperliquid

The White House has picked a side in the fight over Hyperliquid. At a White House event Wednesday, President Trump said CFTC Chair Michael Selig is working to bring the perpetual futures venue into the United States "in a fully compliant and legal fashion." The Defiant reported the remarks.

Selig was at the event, along with SEC Chair Paul Atkins, the chief executives of Coinbase, Ripple, Nasdaq, Robinhood and Kraken, Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov, Gemini's Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and a16z crypto's Chris Dixon. Jeffrey Sprecher of ICE was there as well, a pointed presence: his company spent the spring pressing regulators to rein in Hyperliquid.

Markets read the news within hours. Wednesday night HYPE sat around $69.56, a gain of about 19% in 24 hours, per CoinGecko. Hyperliquid Strategies, the Nasdaq-listed treasury company known as PURR, closed at $9.39, up 30.4% — the biggest one-day gain in its history. CME Group and Cboe both finished lower, off 1.7% and 3.5%, after touching intraday lows of 3.4% and 6.1%.

PURR options saw the loudest reaction. Trading volume came in at nearly eight times the 30-day average — more than 120,000 calls versus fewer than 8,000 puts — with about $10 million in premiums changing hands, CNBC reported. Before the announcement, around 11 a.m., one buyer laid out $65,000 for 719 contracts at an $8 strike, expiring mid-October; those calls rose from 90 cents to $2.45 by the close. Half an hour after the remarks, another trader spent about $510,000 on 2,000 $8-strike calls expiring in November and December. Dennis DeWitt, a co-founder of Millbank Dartmoor Portsmouth, said the pattern could suggest advance knowledge; CNBC offered that as speculation, not proof.

Bringing a non-custodial protocol onshore is not a filing exercise. Hyperliquid has no obvious headquarters or balance sheet for regulators to inspect. Put it under CFTC jurisdiction and its trading slips into the same rulebook that covers CME and ICE — a leap the agency has so far handled product by product, without a formal rulemaking. The announcement also lands, in Hyperliquid's favor, in a lobbying fight incumbents have run since May over whether the platform should face federal oversight or stay away from US customers.

The president's words presume a company the CFTC can examine. A non-custodial protocol has no such company. Selig's likely moves run from a no-action letter for a US operator to a full designated contract market application to a rulemaking that redraws the definition of an exchange. Each produces a different Hyperliquid onshore. The White House has committed to the destination; Selig's next steps decide the form.