ICE Now Builds the Hyperliquid Market It Challenged

Centralized exchanges hold 71% of that money¹. Public stocks make up the single largest slice, at $9 billion. Gold and oil fill most of the rest.

Read fast, the number tells a clean story. Crypto finally cracked Wall Street open for retail traders. A trader holding stablecoins can take leveraged exposure to Nvidia or gold at 2 a.m., from the same account that holds Bitcoin. Perpetual contracts tied to stocks and other assets processed $1.32 trillion in the first five months of 2026⁵. All of 2025 processed $104 billion.

That story skips who built the exchange and who profits from it. Three-quarters of the money sits on centralized exchanges, the houses that already sold leveraged crypto trading to retail traders. This year's fastest growth traces to one new entrant. The New York Stock Exchange's parent spent the spring warning regulators about the very platform it now runs.

Jeff Yan, Hyperliquid's co-founder and CEO, made his case at Token2049 in Singapore on Oct. 7, 2026². He said the usual path to wealth on Wall Street holds the public out until the gains are already gone. “Some assets are only tradable by a few people for many orders of magnitude of its growth, and then ultimately tradable by the public only after all of the growth has been realized by a select few people with privilege,” Yan said.

Yan built Hyperliquid's contracts to erase that order. Hyperliquid's contracts run with an open-ended date, so a trader can hold the position directly and skip the listing². By Oct. 29, 2026, its own code reached further than Singapore.

Intercontinental Exchange, the parent of the New York Stock Exchange, signed a deal with trade[XYZ] on Oct. 29³. The plan runs perpetual futures markets for stocks, commodities, currencies and crypto inside the United States, built on Hyperliquid's code. Jeffrey Sprecher, ICE's CEO, called the plan a complement to his existing business. “We see these perp markets as additive to our futures markets, not a replacement,” Sprecher said.

ICE arrived with a history⁶. In May, CME and ICE pushed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to scrutinize Hyperliquid. The two exchanges warned the platform could distort global oil benchmarks and let sanctioned actors trade in secret. By Oct. 29, 2026, ICE had taken a stake in the company building Hyperliquid's U.S. market. Stanley Druckenmiller, the billionaire investor backing the deal, said he looked forward to using what he called a new product³.

Don Wilson, CEO of the trading firm DRW and its Cumberland crypto desk, read the deal a different way⁴. He asked why traders should want a market that broadcasts every position, aiming the question directly at Druckenmiller's praise. Wilson asked, “Are you aware that if you trade on Hyperliquid, the world will be able to track your positions and trades in real time?” A regulated exchange keeps a position behind a broker. Hyperliquid keeps it open for any wallet to see.

The deal raises a second question, apart from access: who carries the risk it creates? A trader who funds the account pays first, the same as on any exchange. ICE now holds equity in the company running the market, on top of Hyperliquid's own fees³. Tokenized stocks trade on thin order books once the New York Stock Exchange closes for the weekend⁷. A leveraged position caught in that gap can face a forced liquidation before Monday's opening bell.

Yan's point holds up on its own record. A trader can now hold exposure to a company that has yet to go public. Yan says Wall Street once reserved that exact position for insiders. ICE's arrival proves traders want that product badly enough that the exchange owning the New York Stock Exchange wants to sell it too.

That access carries Hyperliquid's own terms. Its trading book sits open for anyone to read. Weekend liquidity stays thin, and its leverage can double a loss as fast as a gain. Wall Street's biggest exchange spent the spring warning regulators about those terms, and by autumn it signed up to sell them.

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Sources

1. Vivian Nguyen, "RWA perpetuals open interest nears $20 billion, CryptoRank data shows," Crypto Briefing, Oct. 26, 2026, https://cryptobriefing.com/rwa-perpetuals-open-interest-nears-20-billion/
2. Zoltan Vardai, "Wall Street Wealth Creation Model Unsustainable for Most Participants: Hyperliquid CEO," Cointelegraph, Oct. 7, 2026, https://cointelegraph.com/news/wall-street-wealth-creation-unsustainable-hyperliquid-ceo
3. Jason Shubnell, "HYPE surges 15% as NYSE parent ICE moves to bring Hyperliquid perps to US," The Block, Oct. 29, 2026, https://www.theblock.co/news/business/2026-10-29-ice-tradexyz-hyperliquid-perpetual-futures-us-432132
4. Benjamin Njiri, "Cumberland's warning to Hyperliquid perp traders: 'The world will track your positions'," AMBCrypto, Nov. 1, 2026, https://ambcrypto.com/cumberlands-warning-to-hyperliquid-perp-traders-the-world-will-track-your-positions/
5. Olivier Acuna, "The reverse bridge: Crypto meets Wall Street using perps," CoinDesk, Aug. 2, 2026, https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/08/02/the-reverse-bridge-crypto-meets-wall-street-using-perps
6. Helene Braun, "CME, ICE push U.S. regulators to scrutinize Hyperliquid over manipulation risks," CoinDesk, May 15, 2026, https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/05/15/cme-ice-push-u-s-regulators-to-scrutinize-hyperliquid-over-manipulation-risks-bloomberg
7. Fiona F, "Risks Behind the 2026 Tokenized Stocks Hype: Key Risks Traders Must Know," BTCC, Aug. 3, 2026, https://www.btcc.com/en-US/academy/stocks/derivatives/risks-behind-the-tokenized-stocks-hype-key-risks-traders-must-know