Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, is in talks with Hyperliquid, a decentralized trading platform whose native token HYPE has jumped more than 80% over the past year. CEO Jeff Sprecher said Hyperliquid is 'bigger than Nasdaq' and that ICE is actively studying the decentralized infrastructure powering it.
The HYPE token hit $62.62 on Thursday, just shy of its all-time high of $64.44. It's up 38.3% over 14 days and 55.1% in the last month. Hyperliquid now handles over $1 billion in daily trading volume, with roughly $5.524 billion locked in its protocol. Its fully diluted valuation stands near $60 billion.
Why Sprecher called Hyperliquid 'bigger than Nasdaq'
Sprecher's remark reflects the scale Hyperliquid has reached in a short time. The platform's derivatives volume and total value locked rival some traditional exchanges. ICE hasn't disclosed what form a partnership might take, but the company is clearly weighing how decentralized tech could slot into its own operations.
Regulatory talks heat up
ICE and CME Group are both discussing regulatory oversight for decentralized derivatives platforms. The conversations center on commodity-linked perpetual contracts and their potential to disrupt traditional price discovery. Regulators are worried that unregulated perpetuals could distort markets or create systemic risk, though no formal proposals have emerged yet.
Compute power as the new oil
CME Group also announced plans to launch GPU compute pricing futures in partnership with Silicon Data. CEO Terry Duffy called compute power 'the new oil of the 21st century.' The new futures contract would let investors bet on the cost of high-performance computing, a market that's ballooned with demand for AI and machine learning workloads.
The discussions between ICE, CME, and Hyperliquid remain ongoing. No timeline has been set for any integration or regulatory framework.
