A central question for Hyperliquid’s US ambitions is whether regulation would apply to its underlying blockchain software or to firms using it to offer trading. The platform, co-founded by 31-year-old billionaire programmer Jeff Yan, has grown quickly, drawing attention from industry incumbents and the White House, although it is not officially accessible in the US.
In a Bloomberg Businessweek feature published Tuesday, Yan discussed Hyperliquid’s US ambitions with writer Ryan Weeks. Bloomberg has also reported that Yan is making the case in Washington that regulatory obligations should fall on financial firms building markets on the blockchain rather than on the network itself, according to Bloomberg Businessweek and a separate Bloomberg report.
Yan’s proposed dividing line is that Hyperliquid functions as infrastructure, while firms deploying exchange products on it would be responsible for safeguards and compliance, Bloomberg reported. Yan has compared the network to the internet, arguing that businesses building on it should determine the checks and balances for the products they launch.
A Coder Who Says He Just Works All the Time
Yan told Weeks that he prefers to focus on coding rather than discuss the future of the industry. “I just work all the time,” he said, according to the Bloomberg Businessweek profile.
Reported figures suggest the company has achieved substantial scale with a small team. Colossus reported that Hyperliquid’s 11 employees generated more than $900 million in profit the previous year, and put the company’s market capitalization at $10 billion; it also said the company had never taken venture capital, according to Colossus. The outlet estimated the broader perpetual-futures market at roughly $7 trillion a month and said Hyperliquid had captured roughly 14% of Binance’s market share in the category.
Climbing Market Share Amid a Crowded Field
Hyperliquid's share of total perpetual-futures volume climbed to just under 6% in March, up from roughly 3.5% a year earlier, with monthly volumes approaching $200 billion, per a report from The Block. That outlet also found the platform's share kept climbing even as overall exchange volumes compressed from their August 2025 peak, and noted that commodities like oil now trade around the clock on Hyperliquid as non-crypto volume makes up a growing share of activity on the platform. The Block added that rivals dYdX and GMX have not matched Hyperliquid's trajectory in volume growth or product expansion.```Separately, a low-confidence SEC filing snippet put Hyperliquid's share of global perpetual-futures volume, including centralized exchanges, at approximately 9.4% as of June 30, 2026 — a different measurement than The Block's figure, drawn from a different date and denominator.
Forbes reported that perpetual-futures trading volume topped $60 trillion in 2025, with as much as $200 billion changing hands daily. The same Forbes report noted that Americans can already trade regulated perpetual-style products through major domestic exchanges including Coinbase and Kraken, though buying crypto itself with borrowed money has lacked a clear federal framework.
Rivals and Regulators Eye the US Market
Hyperliquid is not the only operation angling for a foothold in regulated American perpetual-futures trading. Intercontinental Exchange has announced a partnership with Trade[XYZ] to establish a regulated US venue for the contracts, subject to approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, according to CoinDesk. The proposed market would offer around-the-clock trading in contracts tied to cryptocurrencies, stocks, commodities and currencies, pending that CFTC sign-off.
Under the arrangement, ICE would operate the dedicated US exchange and clearing infrastructure and is also taking a minority stake in Trade[XYZ], though financial terms were not disclosed, per the same CoinDesk report. Trade[XYZ]'s existing markets will continue operating alongside the proposed US venue, for which no launch date has been announced. Meanwhile, Crypto.com and OG.com moved ahead on October 27 by launching continuous, non-expiring crypto perpetual contracts for eligible US traders through CFTC-regulated entities, according to The Crypto Times.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has taken enforcement action against decentralized-finance operators, issuing orders filing and settling charges against Opyn, Inc., ZeroEx, Inc., and Deridex, Inc., according to a CFTC announcement. Against that backdrop, Yan’s effort to keep Hyperliquid’s underlying network outside the scope of exchange-style regulation puts the boundary between blockchain software and the businesses trading on it at the center of the US debate.
What CFTC Guidance Says About Trading Software
A September 17, 2026 staff letter from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission described a limited no-action position for software that passively enables users to transact in Commission-regulated derivatives through registered entities, so long as the software does not hold or control user assets. The letter does not set out a complete allocation of duties among an exchange, intermediary, and clearing organization, and its limited position does not resolve Hyperliquid’s status.
