Hyperliquid has confirmed it is registered in Singapore, according to a Financial Times report published Tuesday. The news lands awkwardly: Singapore's Monetary Authority does not consider the platform to be within its jurisdiction, and it has not issued the exchange a license.
The team behind Hyperliquid, roughly 11 people led by co-founder Jeff Yan, relocated to Singapore in 2024. They never applied for a MAS license. On June 26, MAS added Hyperliquid to Singapore's crypto warning list, which flags firms the public might wrongly assume are regulated by the authority.
What the warning list actually does
The list isn't a ban. It's a public notice — a way for MAS to say it does not supervise a firm even though that firm operates from Singapore. Hyperliquid responded at the time by describing itself as permissionless infrastructure where users retain control of their own funds.
That framing has drawn criticism. Kyle Samani, chairman of Forward Industries, pushed back directly: "Hyperliquid is not permissionless. Stop gaslighting the public." Samani's objection gets at a real tension — a platform can let users custody their own assets while still running a centralized front end, matching engine or compliance layer.
Singapore's licensing squeeze
The MAS warning didn't arrive in a vacuum. The regulator set a June 30, 2025 deadline for local crypto firms serving only overseas clients to get licensed or shut down, and said it would generally not grant those licenses. According to law firm CMS, the rules target running an exchange, brokering trades and holding customer assets.
Hyperliquid's design sidesteps the third category. Trades settle on-chain, and users hold their own funds. Per the FT, that decentralized structure is precisely why MAS does not claim the platform as its own. The regulator has effectively said it lacks a hook into a system where no Singapore entity is custodying customer money.
HYPE holds up, for now
The market hasn't panicked. Hyperliquid's HYPE token trades at $91.64, down 3% in 24 hours. Broader altcoin market value has continued to climb despite the MAS alert issued back in June. That's a notable split: regulatory warnings that would have sunk a token a cycle ago now barely register.
It helps that Hyperliquid's pitch — self-custody, on-chain settlement, no intermediaries — is exactly the story crypto buyers say they want. Whether that story survives more scrutiny from figures like Samani is the open question. The permissionless label is doing a lot of work.
Washington watches from a different angle
In the US, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is seeking comment on new crypto trading rules. The agency has cited the $8 billion FTX fraud as its reason to act early. That's a separate regulatory track from Singapore's, but the direction is the same: watchdogs want to define which activities they can supervise before the next blowup forces their hand.
For Hyperliquid, the immediate issue isn't a license it never sought. It's the warning list entry sitting in public view, and a regulator that has publicly declined to claim it. The CFTC comment period is live. MAS has not indicated it plans to revisit the listing.
What's unresolved
Hyperliquid says it's registered in Singapore. MAS says it doesn't see the platform as within its jurisdiction. Both can be true at once, and that gap — a registered company in a country whose regulator won't supervise it — is where the next round of questions will land. The CFTC's crypto rulemaking comment window is the nearer deadline to watch.
