NYSE Parent ICE Is Building a Perpetual Futures Market on Hyperliquid

Intercontinental Exchange, the parent of the New York Stock Exchange, is planting a flag in crypto rails. Per an Oct. 29 announcement, ICE will stand up a new regulated U.S. market for perpetual futures built on Hyperliquid's blockchain, according to fool.com. TradeXYZ, a firm tightly tied to Hyperliquid, will develop it. ICE is also taking a minority stake in TradeXYZ, pending regulatory sign-off.

No launch date yet, and regulators still have to approve. But the market liked the signal: HYPE climbed 18% over the seven days before the news, then traded at $84.16, down 2.04%, while ICE stock ticked up 2.03% to $172.28.

Why does it matter? Perps are Hyperliquid's money machine — derivative contracts that track an asset's price, never expire, and usually come with leverage. In the 30 days ending Oct. 30, roughly $217.2 billion in perpetuals changed hands on Hyperliquid's exchange, throwing off $64.1 million in revenue.

TradeXYZ is the big fish in Hyperliquid's third-party pond. It runs perps on stocks, indexes, commodities and currencies, launching markets through HIP-3, a feature that lets anyone stake 500,000 HYPE — about $46.5 million as of Oct. 30 — to deploy their own. TradeXYZ holds 97% of the $4.1 billion in open interest across those builder markets.

The fee math is the kicker. Market developers like TradeXYZ keep 50% of the transaction fees their markets generate on Hyperliquid, and the network spends nearly all the rest buying its own coin on the open market — an automatic buyback of sorts. So every ICE-driven trade that pays fees feeds HYPE.

ICE isn't alone at the door. Payward, Kraken's parent, said Sept. 16 it plans to offer U.S. clients perps via Hyperliquid's HIP-3 builder markets, starting with markets run by its CFTC-regulated exchange, Bitnomial. Two regulated routes raise the odds at least one clears — though competitors want U.S. approval too, and the perpetuals arena will stay contested. For Hyperliquid, the takeaway is simpler: heavyweights are lining up to build on its backend, and the builders foot the capital bill.