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Jeffrey Sprecher, chair and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), said the parent of the New York Stock Exchange has held multiple meetings with the Hyperliquid team to discuss overlapping business in onchain perpetual futures, framing the outreach as market-evaluation work rather than a lobbying campaign against the protocol. Speaking at a Bernstein conference on Wednesday, Sprecher pushed back on recent reporting that ICE and CME Group had urged the CFTC to take a harder line on Hyperliquid, calling those conversations exploratory and insisting ICE wants a "level playing field" to compete in 24/7 onchain perps rather than a regulatory shutdown.
The CEO's quotes drew a sharp line between offshore onchain venues and US-regulated books: "Why are you prohibiting us from doing this when it's already happening?" Sprecher said. "And if you don't think it's lawful, then how come they're not getting the same nasty letters that you send us?" The framing is the most direct public statement from a top US exchange chief that offshore onchain perps have built a market US rules currently block its members from entering.
Why it matters
ICE is no longer a peripheral observer of crypto infrastructure. It already holds a board seat at OKX following a $25 billion-valuation investment, last week announced oil perps with OKX tied to ICE's Brent and WTI benchmarks, and in March added another $600 million to prediction-markets platform Polymarket. Sprecher's "we're not freaked out about it, we're actually talking to these people" tone is a different posture from the regulator-pressure reports that surfaced via Bloomberg earlier this month, and it repositions ICE as a potential partner or acquirer of onchain perps technology rather than a纯粹 competitor seeking to kneecap it.
The structural question Sprecher flagged is the regulatory one that will determine how that market splits: "Do they create some new category of regulated perpetual futures?
Frequently asked questions
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What did ICE's CEO say about Hyperliquid?
Jeffrey Sprecher, chair and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange, said ICE has held multiple meetings with the Hyperliquid team to discuss onchain perpetuals, framing the talks as market-evaluation work and pushing for a "level playing field" with offshore onchain venues.
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Is ICE trying to get Hyperliquid shut down?
No — Sprecher pushed back on reporting that ICE and CME were lobbying the CFTC to crack down on Hyperliquid, calling those conversations exploratory and saying ICE wants permission to compete in the same 24/7 onchain perps market rather than have it closed off.
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How is ICE already involved in crypto?
ICE holds a board seat at OKX after investing at a $25 billion valuation, last week launched oil perps with OKX tied to ICE's Brent and WTI benchmarks, and in March added another $600 million to prediction-markets platform Polymarket.
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What regulatory question did Sprecher raise about onchain perps?
Sprecher said regulators face a binary choice: create a new category of regulated perpetual futures, or classify onchain perps as swaps and pull them into Dodd-Frank, EMIR, and similar regimes in the EU and Japan.
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Why is the SpaceX IPO relevant to onchain perps?
Sprecher pointed to the upcoming SpaceX IPO around June 11, where TradeXYZ has already listed pre-IPO perpetuals on Hyperliquid, as a test case for whether onchain price discovery can influence a major public listing.
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