Trump Says CFTC Is Working to Bring Hyperliquid to the US, Sending HYPE Up 20%
Trump told crypto executives at the White House the Senate should pass a “fair version” of the CLARITY Act, as a Sept. 15 cloture vote looms and CFTC Chair Selig works to bring Hyperliquid into the US.
President Donald Trump said Wednesday that CFTC Chair Michael Selig is working to bring Hyperliquid, an offshore perpetual-futures platform, into the U.S. market under a compliant framework. The protocol’s HYPE token jumped roughly 20% over the next 24 hours.
“I understand Mike [Selig] is also working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States in a fully compliant and legal fashion,” Trump said at a White House press conference with technology executives and federal agency chairs. “Working very hard on that.”
The remarks are the first time the administration has publicly named Hyperliquid as a target for formal CFTC integration. No regulatory plan or timeline has been released. Whether an application has been filed, or when a compliant U.S. service might launch, remains unclear. Hyperliquid did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
HYPE was trading around $62 before Trump spoke. It then surged as much as 16% to a 24-hour high of $72.28 and settled near $70, according to Cointelegraph, citing CoinGecko data. The Block pegged the 24-hour gain at 17% against its own price feed. Figures differ by source.
Three Hyperliquid-linked exchange-traded funds moved in lockstep. The 21Shares Hyperliquid ETF (THYP), Bitwise Hyperliquid ETF (BHYP), and Grayscale Hyperliquid Staking ETF (HYPG) each rose nearly 20% in Wednesday’s session, The Block reported. A separate Nasdaq-listed vehicle, Hyperliquid Strategies (PURR), closed at $9.39, up 30.4%, according to Yahoo Finance data cited by Cointelegraph. Hyperliquid Strategies has said it is independent and not affiliated with Hyperliquid.
What would change on the ground? A compliant U.S. onramp would let American traders access Hyperliquid’s perpetuals market directly under CFTC oversight. The platform has not offered that to date as a registered venue.
CFTC staff greenlit bitcoin perpetual futures for the U.S. market earlier this year, clearing KalshiEX, LLC and Coinbase to list them. Selig told Bankless in a June interview that the agency wanted to “create a path to bring these onchain markets into the United States” and predicted onchain technology like Hyperliquid would “transform our markets.”
The path is not frictionless. Incumbent exchange operators CME Group and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) have warned that unregistered perpetuals venues could be used to manipulate prices. They want the CFTC to require Hyperliquid to register, according to Bloomberg reporting cited by The Block.
Roughly four hours before Trump spoke, a trader paid about $65,000 for 719 PURR call options at an $8 strike, expiring in mid-October, according to Cointelegraph, citing CNBC and OptiView data. The contracts traded near $0.90 at the time. By the close, they were quoted at $2.45, an unrealized gain of roughly $111,000. Volume in October $8 calls hit 2,575 contracts against 67 in open interest beforehand, more than 140 times the 30-day average. The data confirms elevated trading but does not independently identify the buyer.
Trump also used the press conference to push for passage of the Clarity Act, a broad cryptocurrency market-structure bill that has faced repeated setbacks and has limited time to clear Congress before year-end. “It’s a very powerful, structured legislation, which will keep us ahead of China, keep us ahead of everyone else,” he said.
Asked whether the U.S. has plans to acquire significant amounts of bitcoin, Trump said: “But certainly it’s been talked about. It’s taken a lot of pressure off the dollar.”
The CFTC previously disclosed a July 15 meeting with Hyperliquid Labs and Hyperliquid Strategies, Cointelegraph reported. What Wednesday’s remarks change in practice remains to be seen. No application has been confirmed, and the agency has not set a timeline.
