#HYPE逆市大涨 #Gate广场万圣节 The Second Handshake Between Licenses and Blockchain: When the NYSE’s Parent Company Bets on On-Chain Perpetuals

On October 29, news sent shockwaves through global finance: Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, with a market capitalization of $87.5 billion, is working with legendary hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller to bring a brand-new on-chain perpetuals market under the US regulatory framework. At the same table is tradexyz, an innovative team founded just 381 days ago and built on the decentralized trading protocol Hyperliquid.
After the news broke, Hyperliquid’s native token HYPE surged to $86, while ICE touched $162.55 intraday. Many are accustomed to viewing this investment as a “toe in the water” by traditional giants in crypto assets. But look past the emotional surface and a different picture emerges: this is not a company hyping a concept, but the formal incorporation into the plumbing of US-compliant finance of two of modern financial history’s most important “legacies”—stablecoins (which solve how funds move) and perpetual contracts (which solve how prices are anchored).

01 On-Chain Perpetuals: An “Efficient New Species” in the Eyes of Traditional Finance
To understand the significance of this partnership, first look at what tradexyz has achieved over the past year. With support from Hyperliquid’s underlying framework (HIP-3), any team can post a certain amount of HYPE as collateral and independently launch a market on a shared matching engine: whether for stocks, commodities, or stock indexes, leverage, trading hours, and settlement rules are all written in code. Over the past 381 days, cumulative trading volume on this on-chain market has exceeded $650 billion. Commodities and stocks account for a considerable share. One typical scenario demonstrates its efficiency:
In the traditional model, if news breaks on a Saturday night that a chip company is being acquired, traditional portfolio managers can only watch helplessly—the US stock market won’t open until Monday night, index futures until Sunday night, and there is nowhere to hedge pre-IPO assets.
In the on-chain model, within the same risk engine and single account, investors can immediately borrow against tokenized assets, short index perpetuals to hedge risk, and even lock in exposure to oil and unlisted companies in a single trade, with margin deducted just once. It is precisely this “24/7 risk-hedging capability” that has attracted the attention of traditional giants such as S&P Dow Jones and extended the asset list to computing power and volatility.

02 Two Routes Into the US Market
In the past, US regulators took a hardline approach to offshore crypto derivatives. But between the second half of 2025 and October 2026, the tide turned. There are two main routes into the US-compliant market:
1 Use an existing license (Krak model): On October 26, Payward, Krak’s parent company, disclosed that it had deployed CFTC-regulated perpetual markets on Hyperliquid, using the credentials of a licensed exchange to establish a compliant presence.
2 Giants enter directly (ICE model): ICE is directly leveraging the clearing capabilities and customer network of its parent company, the NYSE, to open a compliant channel from the top down. ICE’s exploration of crypto has not been smooth sailing. In 2018, it incubated Bakkt and launched Bitcoin futures, but they made little impact due to a lack of market liquidity; in 2025, it chose to take a stake in OK; this time, it is directly providing the license, clearing, and a list of compliant clients. Building its own platform means staffing a team, investing in a platform means tying up capital, while issuing a license requires only back-end support. At 73, Druckenmiller—this legendary investor with annualized returns exceeding 30% over 30 years and no losing years—has also chosen to invest at this moment. Capital has keenly sensed the formation of new infrastructure.

03 Regulatory Green Lights and the “Real-World Hurdles” That Remain
This convergence has been made possible by a wave of regulatory easing since the second half of 2025:
CFTC policy window: On October 5, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) proposed establishing a new category for crypto asset markets and allowing eligible broad-based index perpetual futures to have no expiration date.
Political impetus from the top: From a meeting between ICE executives and the Hyperliquid team in May this year to public remarks at a White House event in August, the institutional framework for compliance was built step by step over five months. The paperwork came first, the announcement followed; the order has never been reversed. However, regulatory concessions do not mean that technical rules can simply be transferred as they are. To handle weekend market closures, on-chain perpetual protocols use a defensive mechanism involving “oracle pricing + an exploration range (locked after two anchors).” But before the market opened on October 19, this on-chain mechanism caused nearly $52 million in liquidations of chip stock perpetuals within 10 minutes. The US futures market has strict requirements for price discovery and position limits. In the eyes of the CFTC, accustomed to the prudent regulation of traditional securities, the on-chain logic of “using algorithms to force price locks during market closures” still has major compliance gaps. Whether it can pass a full regulatory review is the key hurdle that will determine how far this partnership goes; a single tweet cannot solve it.

04 The Essence of Commercial Deployment: Competing for Pricing Power and Settlement Sovereignty
Looking beyond the immediate celebration, a broader global perspective reveals deeper considerations behind this wave of “bringing under the regulatory umbrella” by US regulators and established exchanges: 1 From “driving crypto out of the US” to “bringing it inside”: For the past decade, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has typically pushed crypto innovation toward offshore markets such as Singapore and Dubai, at the cost of losing pricing power over emerging global assets. Now, by issuing DCM (Designated Contract Market) licenses and clearing credentials, they are choosing to “bring” code and liquidity into the US, keeping compliance standards in Wall Street’s hands.
2 A second reinforcement of the dollar on-chain: On-chain perpetual trading relies heavily on stablecoins (such as USDC) as collateral, and the underlying assets of stablecoins are mostly short-term US Treasuries. This gives the dollar a 24-hour “digital highway” that bypasses traditional banks and the SWIFT system, further reinforcing the dollar’s on-chain credibility.
3 Filling the gap in time: CME dominates daytime financial pricing, but the vacuum at night and on weekends has long been occupied by offshore markets. ICE’s incorporation of on-chain perpetuals essentially eliminates the NYSE’s closing hours altogether. Whoever defines derivatives prices over the weekend controls the benchmark that drives Monday’s open. The opening price is the settlement statement for those 48 hours.

05 How Should Ordinary People View This Change?
As HYPE surges and giants enter the market, ordinary investors need to maintain a clear awareness of the risks:
On-chain US stocks are not stocks
On-chain perpetual contracts are essentially price-based betting instruments. They carry no dividend rights or shareholder voting rights, and come with high leverage of 10 to 20 times. Trying to use them as a substitute for a traditional brokerage account is extremely dangerous.
Asset bubbles and dilution risks: Related tokens have large market capitalizations and face substantial token unlocks and pressure from core team lockups, making investment in the secondary market highly volatile. However, one undeniable reality is unfolding at the macro level: the power to set prices for global assets during Asian trading hours is quietly shifting to on-chain derivatives. In the future, when you wake up in the middle of the night, movements in global commodities or US stock futures will already have a real-time, around-the-clock reference.

Conclusion
After a decade of conceptual hype, only two things from blockchain have truly entered the lifeblood of global finance: stablecoins as settlement tools, and perpetual contracts as risk-hedging tools. As these two legacies are formally incorporated into the clearing framework of the New York financial exchange, a new modern financial system that “never closes and runs around the clock” is rising on the other side of the ocean in a regulated testing ground.$HYPE