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Jeff Sprecher, founder and chief executive of Intercontinental Exchange, the roughly $90 billion exchange giant that owns the New York Stock Exchange, called decentralized exchange Hyperliquid "bigger than Nasdaq" at an investor conference this week, a rare endorsement of a crypto-native venue from one of the most powerful figures in traditional finance.
HYPE, the token of the Hyperliquid blockchain, has gained about 70% over the past 30 days and touched an all-time high of $67 today, outpacing a broader crypto market that slipped roughly 5% over the past week, according to CoinGecko data. The token is up 13% over 24 hours. It is the 11th-largest cryptocurrency by market value, at about $15 billion.
The comments are notable because ICE is not a bystander in the space it is praising. The company has taken stakes in crypto exchange OKX and prediction market Polymarket, and Sprecher said it has hooked the New York Stock Exchange to a private blockchain for settlement. His framing of an onchain rival as a credible market signals how far the line between regulated exchanges and decentralized venues has blurred, just as institutional money begins flowing toward HYPE through US exchange-traded funds.
