NYSE Parent ICE Seeks ‘Level Playing Field’ for 24/7 Onchain Perps

Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), is urging regulators to allow regulated exchanges to offer 24/7 onchain perpetual futures trading, according to ICE CEO Jeffrey Sprecher.

Speaking at a Bernstein conference on Wednesday, Sprecher said that he was urging regulators to create a “level playing field” for launching 24/7 onchain perps contracts, arguing that regulators are “prohibiting us from doing this when it’s already happening.” 

The CEO said that ICE had multiple exploratory discussions with decentralized exchange Hyperliquid about the synergies between the crypto and traditional finance (TradFi) industries, where ICE sought to “learn” more about onchain perps.

The comments are the latest testament on how more TradFi companies are exploring ways to enable 24/7 trading for stocks and commodities via blockchain rails, following Hyperliquid’s success. 

The remarks come a week after OKX said it will introduce perpetual futures based on ICE’s Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude benchmarks, two of the world’s most widely used oil price indicators, Cointelegraph reported on May 22.

The trading products are the first initiative announced under a broader partnership between  ICE and OKX, after ICE invested in the cryptocurrency exchange at a $25 billion valuation in March.

Earlier in March, the NYSE also partnered with tokenization platform Securitize as part of a broader effort to develop blockchain-based stock trading infrastructure with 24/7 trading and settlement for Wall Street.

Cointelegraph has approached ICE for comment on whether the exchange operator was planning to launch an onchain perps trading platform via Hyperliquid.

Related: UK proposes near-24/7 settlement to prepare markets for tokenization

Hyperliquid is “bigger than Nasdaq,” says ICE CEO

Sprecher praised Hyperliquid’s rapid growth as a trading platform, which facilitated the creation of multiple new billionaires, said the CEO, adding:

“If you haven’t heard about it, it’s bigger than Nasdaq, okay? It’s 11 people.”

Hyperliquid remains far smaller than Nasdaq by conventional trading volume measures, but Sprecher’s comment underscored the pressure that always-on crypto derivatives venues are putting on regulated exchanges.

Hyperliquid is ranked as the 7th largest decentralized exchange on CoinGecko, with a 3.7% market share and $195 million in daily trading volume.

It ranks as the fourth-largest fee-generating protocol in the crypto industry, generating $15.6 million in weekly fees in the past seven days, DefiLlama data shows.

Top decentralized exchanges by trading volume and market share. Source: CoinGecko

Hyperliquid has been expanding its functionalities and recently launched canonical prediction markets for offchain events, Cointelegraph reported on Tuesday.

The platform’s growing functionalities are positioning Hyperliquid as the crypto industry’s next “super-app,” making the Hyperliquid (HYPE) token “one of the most mispriced assets in crypto today,” as investors are still evaluating it as just a perp DEX, said Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at crypto asset manager Bitwise. 

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