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Hyperliquid bigger than NASDAQ, says ICE CEO Jeffrey Sprecher
Sprecher saluted Hyperliquid’s team, signaling deeper engagement between Wall Street incumbents and crypto-native rails.
Updated May 29, 2026, 12:21 p.m. Published May 29, 2026, 12:05 p.m. 2 min read
What to know:
- Jeffrey Sprecher, the CEO of Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), said at a Bernstein conference that the decentralized crypto derivatives platform Hyperliquid is “bigger than Nasdaq” in trading activity and praised its small core team as “very, very smart people.”
- Hyperliquid, whose HYPE token has a market value far below Nasdaq’s, dominates more than 70 percent of the decentralized perpetual futures market and has attracted non-crypto traders by offering 24/7 oil derivatives trading, including on weekends when ICE’s markets are closed.
- Sprecher argued that Hyperliquid’s unregulated offshore status highlights a regulatory gap under U.S. and European derivatives rules and said he expects policymakers soon to choose between creating a new category for perpetual futures or bringing such venues under existing Dodd-Frank and EMIR regimes.
Hyperliquid’s HYPE token carries a market capitalization of roughly $15.1 billion against Nasdaq Inc.’s $50 billion as of Thursday, so the comparison doesn’t hold by company value.
On daily perpetual futures volume, though, Hyperliquid clears billions of dollars in notional turnover and holds more than 70% of the decentralized perp-DEX market, per industry data.
The “11 people” refers to Hyperliquid Labs, the core development entity, while the broader project draws on open-source contributors and a validator set that runs the underlying Layer-1 blockchain.
