ICE Chief Sprecher Calls Hyperliquid ‘Bigger Than Nasdaq’ as HYPE Run Draws TradFi Notice

Jeff Sprecher, founder and chief executive of Intercontinental Exchange, the roughly $90 billion exchange giant that owns the New York Stock Exchange, called decentralized exchange Hyperliquid “bigger than Nasdaq” at an investor conference this week, a rare endorsement of a crypto-native venue from one of the most powerful figures in traditional finance.

HYPE, the token of the Hyperliquid blockchain, has gained about 70% over the past 30 days and touched an all-time high of $67 today, outpacing a broader crypto market that slipped roughly 5% over the past week, according to CoinGecko data. The token is up 13% over 24 hours. It is the 11th-largest cryptocurrency by market value, at about $15 billion.

The comments are notable because ICE is not a bystander in the space it is praising. The company has taken stakes in crypto exchange OKX and prediction market Polymarket, and Sprecher said it has hooked the New York Stock Exchange to a private blockchain for settlement. His framing of an onchain rival as a credible market signals how far the line between regulated exchanges and decentralized venues has blurred, just as institutional money begins flowing toward HYPE through US exchange-traded funds.

A founder’s salute

Speaking at the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference on Tuesday, Sprecher said he had met the Hyperliquid team several times and described them as “extremely smart.” “I love these guys. I wish I was younger and doing it,” he said. He pointed to the wealth the platform has minted with a small team, saying “it’s bigger than Nasdaq” and noting “it’s 11 people.”

Hyperliquid is the largest decentralized perpetual futures exchange, with about $5.9 billion in total value locked, according to DefiLlama. Perpetual futures, or perps, are derivatives that let traders bet on an asset’s price with no expiry date, often with heavy leverage. The protocol runs its order book entirely onchain on its own Layer 1 network and channels most of its trading fees into buying back HYPE.

ETF inflows fuel the climb

Much of HYPE’s ascent has tracked the arrival of US spot ETFs. Funds from Bitwise and 21Shares drew more than $100 million in combined net inflows within their first 10 trading sessions, extending an eight-day inflow streak that included a record single day. Bitwise has said it will direct 10% of its fund’s management fees toward holding and staking HYPE.

The pipeline is widening. Grayscale filed a fourth amendment to its spot HYPE ETF registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday, renaming the product the Grayscale Hyperliquid Staking ETF and setting it up to list on Nasdaq under the ticker GHYP. VanEck has also filed for a staked HYPE fund. Repeated amendments often reflect active talks with regulators rather than delays.

The SpaceX wager

Sprecher reserved particular attention for Hyperliquid’s synthetic market tracking SpaceX, which lets traders take leveraged positions on the rocket maker before it goes public. The Defiant reported the launch of that pre-IPO perpetual earlier this month. Sprecher said the price discovered there could rival the offering itself, calling it “really interesting to watch” when SpaceX lists, which he pegged to June 11, and said the onchain market “could be bigger than the IPO.”

A regulatory caveat

For all the praise, Sprecher framed Hyperliquid as both an opportunity and a regulatory problem. He pushed back on a report that had ICE “freaked out” about the venue, saying the firm was instead “talking to these people and learning.” But he questioned why incumbents face restrictions that crypto-native rivals do not. “Why are you prohibiting us from doing this when it’s already happening?” he said. “Can’t we have a level playing field?”

He flagged the risk in the product, too. Hyperliquid offers “up to 100 to 1 leverage, which is part of the allure,” he said, a structure that can magnify losses as fast as gains. He argued regulators must decide whether to create a new category for perpetual futures or fold them into the swaps rules written after the 2008 financial crisis. The danger is not theoretical: a SpaceX-linked perpetual on the platform crashed about 45% in half an hour this week, triggering an estimated $1.5 million in liquidations, though it did not drag down HYPE.

What’s next

Traders now look to two near-term tests: SpaceX’s planned debut next month, which will show how closely Hyperliquid’s onchain price tracked the real thing, and the SEC’s handling of the Grayscale and VanEck filings. A scheduled unlock of about 9.9 million HYPE tokens on June 6, worth more than $500 million at current prices, could also weigh on the market.