Hyperliquid asks for equity perps as security futures, and no rulemaking to get there

Two figures in the same filing describe two different businesses. The $480bn of cumulative notional belongs to independent operators who deployed their own perpetual markets on Hyperliquid in oil, metals, currencies, equity indices and single stocks over ten months, alongside roughly $4bn of open interest ^[6]. DefiLlama's count for the venue as a whole is above $5trn of cumulative perpetual volume and near $13bn of open interest ^[13]. The slice being presented to Washington is therefore under a tenth of the volume the exchange clears ^[16], while carrying close to three in every ten dollars of its open interest ^[17]. Set cumulative notional against current open interest and the builder markets show about 120 turns versus roughly 385 for the venue overall ^[18]; the measurement windows differ, so read that as a direction rather than a ratio. It says the independent books hold committed capital that trades comparatively rarely. And $480bn over ten months averages about $48bn a month of churn ^[19], which is not a pool of assets waiting to be moved onshore.

What HPC wants is cheap to grant. It asks the commissions to confirm that a qualifying cash-settled equity perpetual can be listed as a security future, to leave listing decisions with venues, to keep the classification identical at both agencies, and to modernise the security futures framework ^[4], and it says interpretive guidance, policy statements and staff action can do all four without formal rulemaking ^[5]. That is the fast route and also the least anchored one. The letter's own history section is the warning: novel options, index participations and volatility-index futures each hit the same inter-agency boundary over four decades, and each dispute stalled new markets for years ^[11]. HPC quoted a federal judge comparing the exercise to deciding whether tetrahedrons belong in square or round holes ^[10].

The destination matters as much as the permission. Security futures is a category where CME only revived single-stock futures on July 27, the first real activity in years ^[8]. Onshore equity perps would launch into that, starting from whatever liquidity US participants bring, not inheriting the offshore book. The nearest precedent stops short too: the CFTC cleared Kalshi's BTCPERP as a futures contract on May 29, and in the same policy statement flagged equity perpetuals as needing joint SEC-CFTC review ^[7].

The economics of the two legal buckets are identical; what differs is who may trade them and where ^[9], which is why the filing is aimed at the agencies' joint request for comment on defining "swap" and "security-based swap" ^[3] rather than at Congress. HPC's argument is that a perpetual already carries the hallmarks courts use for futures, and that the absent expiry date does not disqualify it ^[2], with the pitch that following its steps brings more of the offshore market home ^[12].

Who is paying is on the record. The Hyper Foundation launched HPC in February 2026 with 1 million HYPE tokens, worth about $30m at the time, and hired Jake Chervinsky to run it ^[14]. Trump's August 20 remark that CFTC chairman Michael Selig was working to bring Hyperliquid into the US legally moved HYPE more than 17% ^[15]. The token repriced on a political sentence before any agency wrote a word, which tells you what the market is actually tracking.