What are equity perpetual contracts?

Perpetual contracts are derivatives without an expiry date, held open indefinitely via a funding-rate mechanism. Equity perps reference a single stock or equity index rather than a crypto asset, and today trade almost entirely on offshore crypto venues.

Why route this through the security futures regime?

Security futures are the one U.S. derivatives category where the SEC and CFTC share jurisdiction by statute, with rules on margin, position limits, and reporting already codified. Fitting equity perps inside that shell avoids a jurisdictional fight and does not require new legislation.

HIP-3 is a Hyperliquid protocol module that lets any deployer create a new perpetual market permissionlessly, without a central listing committee. The Policy Center cites it as evidence that market-creation can be decentralized while still producing venue-scale volume.

Hyperliquid Policy Center Presses SEC, CFTC to Green-Light Equity Perps as Security Futures

Market impact

The filing itself does not move a listed asset. It moves the regulatory clock. If the SEC and CFTC open a comment window, expect Nasdaq, CBOE, and any broker-dealer with a security futures license to weigh in, because a domestic equity perps market would route order flow through their infrastructure rather than offshore matching engines.

Bank of New York Mellon and other prime brokers that already custody digital assets would be the natural clearing candidates. The headline reads bullish for Hyperliquid's positioning. The flow picture is more nuanced.

HIP-3's $480 billion in ten months is a real number, but it is a fraction of the offshore perps complex, and regulators tend to threshold on multi-year data, not first-year data. The petition's success will hinge less on the volume figure than on whether Hyperliquid can show U. S.

-grade surveillance, margining, and settlement finality on a permissionless venue.

Hyperliquid Policy Center Presses SEC, CFTC to Green-Light Equity Perps as Security Futures

Hyperliquid Policy Center petitioned the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Monday to let qualifying equity perpetual contracts trade onshore under the existing security futures regime, per a filing summary published by Crypto.News. The group anchored its case on HIP-3, the Hyperliquid protocol's permissionless market-creation module, which it says cleared more than $480 billion in notional volume in its first ten months. The submission lands in Washington as U.S. regulators weigh how to fold perpetual-style products, long dominant offshore, into domestic derivatives law.

By Mira Volkov· AI-assisted· Macro editor

What happened

Hyperliquid Policy Center, the advocacy arm affiliated with the Hyperliquid ecosystem, filed a policy request on Monday urging the SEC and CFTC to treat qualifying equity perpetual contracts as security futures, a joint-jurisdiction category the two agencies have shared since 2000. Crypto. News, which first reported the submission, said the filing pins its argument on ten months of on-chain data from HIP-3, the module that lets builders spin up perp markets on Hyperliquid without whitelisting.

The center pegs HIP-3's cumulative notional at more than $480 billion, a figure it uses to argue that equity-linked perps have already found real demand and can be surveilled onshore. The proposal does not ask for a new statute. It asks the regulators to confirm that equity perps meeting position-limit, margin, and reporting standards already codified for security futures can enter U.

S. venues under the current rulebook.

Why it matters

Perpetual futures are the single largest product category in crypto derivatives, and until now the U. S. has ceded almost all of that flow to offshore venues like Binance, Bybit, and OKX.

An SEC-CFTC nod that equity perps fit inside the security futures shell would be the first credible onshore path for the format. It would also settle a jurisdictional question that has stalled every prior perps filing: security futures are the one product line where the two agencies share authority by design, which removes the usual SEC-versus-CFTC turf fight before it starts. For Hyperliquid, the stakes are direct.

HIP-3 is the growth engine cited in the filing, and a U. S. regulatory acknowledgement would validate the permissionless-market model at exactly the moment competitors are trying to copy it.

Market impact

Hyperliquid Policy Center Presses SEC, CFTC to Green-Light Equity Perps as Security Futures

What happened

Why it matters

Market impact

What to watch

Disclaimer

Key takeaways

Frequently asked

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