The Hyperliquid Policy Center published a comment letter today urging the SEC and CFTC to adopt a unified regulatory framework for perpetual futures contracts, proposing that jurisdiction be determined by the underlying asset rather than contract structure.
The advocacy organization submitted its position to a joint request for comment from both agencies, arguing that harmonized rules could bring the fast-growing derivatives market back to U.S. exchanges. The perpetuals market has grown to roughly $480 billion in open interest according to the HPC's assessment, yet remains fragmented across offshore platforms and unregulated domestic venues due to regulatory ambiguity.
The HPC's core proposal treats the reference asset as the determining factor for regulator assignment. Under this framework, a perpetual contract tracking bitcoin would fall under CFTC jurisdiction as a commodity futures product, while a perpetual on a stock index would be overseen by the SEC as a security derivative. The classification would apply regardless of whether the contract is cash-settled or physically settled, or whether it trades on a centralized exchange or decentralized protocol.
The SEC and CFTC have struggled for years to establish clear boundaries for derivatives products that don't fit neatly into traditional categories. Perpetual futures, which lack expiration dates and use funding rates to keep prices tethered to spot markets, emerged primarily offshore after the agencies tightened enforcement against unregistered trading platforms in 2021. Spot bitcoin and ether trading is now legal in the U.S., but perpetuals remain in a regulatory gray zone that deters major institutional brokers and custody providers from offering them domestically.
The HPC was established in February 2026 as an independent advocacy organization backed by Hyperliquid, a decentralized derivatives protocol. The organization's comment letter arrives as both agencies face mounting pressure from policymakers and market participants to clarify rules for crypto derivatives before the next presidential administration takes office in January 2027.
The two-regulator approach HPC proposes mirrors structures used in traditional finance, where the CFTC oversees futures on commodities and the SEC oversees options on securities. Adoption would require both agencies to issue joint guidance or coordinate rulemaking, a process that has stalled repeatedly over jurisdiction disputes in the past decade. The HPC's framework would leave room for either agency to claim authority over hybrid products tied to multiple asset classes, a category that may grow as perpetual markets mature.
