President Trump announced on August 19 that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is actively working to bring Hyperliquid, the decentralized perpetual futures exchange, onshore for US traders. The HYPE token responded the way you’d expect: it ripped approximately 19%, trading around $69 to $70 in the hours following the announcement.
Hyperliquid has spent its existence in a familiar crypto paradox: massively popular with traders, but operating outside US jurisdiction because no clear regulatory path existed. The platform offers non-custodial, fully onchain perpetual contracts, a product category that has become the backbone of crypto derivatives trading globally.
The groundwork for this announcement was laid in July 2026, when Hyperliquid’s Policy Center approached the CFTC seeking clarity on what compliance would actually look like for onchain software and derivatives. That conversation apparently went well enough that a sitting president felt comfortable putting his name behind the outcome a month later.
CFTC Chair Selig, appointed during Trump’s second term, has signaled that the agency intends to craft a tailored regulatory framework specifically for onchain perpetuals. Selig has emphasized that legacy rules, many of which trace back to the 1930s, are simply inadequate for governing decentralized finance protocols.
