Hyperliquid has faced a potential 10-to-12-month regulatory process to enter the U.S. market even if federal agencies move quickly, according to former SEC senior counsel Ashley Ebersole, after President Donald Trump said regulators were working on a compliant route for the perpetual futures platform.
Summary
- Ebersole told crypto.news that bringing Hyperliquid to the U.S. would require more than a single CFTC registration or approval.
- The CFTC would likely oversee most crypto perpetuals, while securities-linked contracts could fall under SEC jurisdiction.
- Ebersole estimates that building a regulatory pathway could take 10 to 12 months even if both agencies actively pursue it.
- Existing law could offer a faster route, but Ebersole said congressional legislation would provide more legal certainty.
- Any U.S. framework created for Hyperliquid could also give Coinbase, Kraken, and other registered platforms a route to offer similar products.
Ashley Ebersole, co-founder and chief legal officer at tx and a former senior counsel at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, told crypto.news that the main obstacle is not simply securing permission for Hyperliquid to operate in the country. U.S. regulators would first have to establish how offshore-style crypto perpetual futures fit within existing securities and derivatives laws.
President Donald Trump brought the issue into focus on Aug. 19 during a White House meeting with crypto and financial industry executives. Trump said Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Michael Selig was working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States in a “fully compliant and legal fashion.” Contemporary reports did not identify an approval, regulatory structure, or timetable for such a move.
The comments came as the administration pressed Congress to advance the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. As previously covered by crypto.news, Trump used the same Aug. 19 meeting to urge lawmakers to pass the legislation, which would establish clearer boundaries between SEC and CFTC oversight of digital assets.
Hyperliquid would need more than CFTC approval
Ebersole said U.S. law does not currently provide a straightforward route for offering crypto perpetual futures to American retail customers in the same form commonly available on offshore platforms.
The CFTC would probably have primary jurisdiction over perpetual contracts tied to commodities, including crypto assets that are not securities, according to Ebersole. Contracts based on securities, however, could fall under the SEC’s authority as security-based swaps or other securities-linked products.
“The threshold issue is that U.S. law does not currently provide a straightforward regulatory pathway for offering crypto perpetual futures to U.S. retail customers in the form in which they trade offshore,” Ebersole said.
For Hyperliquid, a compliant structure could involve registration requirements covering the trading venue, clearing, and intermediaries. Ebersole said designated contract market, or DCM, and derivatives clearing organization, or DCO, infrastructure could form part of the process, with separate SEC requirements applying where securities are involved.
Registration would address only part of the problem. According to Ebersole, federal agencies would first need to determine whether Congress has already given them sufficient authority over the products and then establish rules under which perpetuals could legally be offered.
“The harder problem is not simply obtaining a registration; it is that the existing U.S. regulatory architecture was not designed around offshore-style perpetuals, so a lot of regulatory ‘building’ would be needed.”
Regulators could use formal rulemaking, exemptive relief, or a combination of both to create such a pathway, Ebersole added.
Some of that regulatory debate is already underway. In July, the Hyperliquid Policy Center and Phantom asked the CFTC to develop rules tailored to onchain markets instead of applying requirements designed for traditional intermediaries. The groups argued that decentralized software developers and non-custodial wallet providers should not automatically face the same registration obligations as conventional financial firms.
SEC and CFTC jurisdiction would follow the underlying asset
Dividing responsibility between the two federal agencies would create another layer of work.
Ebersole compared the issue with the framework established after the Dodd-Frank Act, which divided federal oversight between swaps regulated by the CFTC and security-based swaps overseen by the SEC. In his view, crypto perpetuals could follow a similar principle, with jurisdiction determined by the economic exposure of each contract.
A perpetual based on a security or group of securities would generally involve the SEC, while one tied to a commodity would normally fall under the CFTC’s derivatives authority, he said.
More complicated questions could arise when spot assets and derivatives interact inside the same trading ecosystem. According to Ebersole, such arrangements could create edge cases requiring coordination between both regulators, much as the agencies had to develop detailed jurisdictional boundaries following Dodd-Frank.
The issue has become particularly relevant for equity-linked perpetuals. On Aug. 24, the Hyperliquid Policy Center proposed treating qualifying equity perpetuals as security futures under an existing structure jointly overseen by the SEC and CFTC. The organization said HIP-3 markets had processed more than $480 billion in cumulative notional volume during their first 10 months.
Several days earlier, the Policy Center and trade[XYZ] had also submitted five proposed pillars to the SEC for regulating pre-IPO perpetual contracts. The SEC had published the submission but had not endorsed or approved the proposed products.
A Hyperliquid US pathway could take 10 to 12 months
Even with political support, Ebersole expects the administrative process to take considerably longer than the technical work needed to offer the products.
His 10-to-12-month estimate assumes the SEC and CFTC actively decide to establish a route for perpetuals. Regulators would first have to identify their statutory authority, develop a framework, and prepare any required rules or exemptions.
A formal rulemaking process could then require agencies to publish proposals, collect public comments, review those submissions, adopt final measures, and implement the resulting framework.
“The 10-to-12-month estimate assumes a lengthy procedure phase that’s principally about administrative process rather than technological implementation,” Ebersole said.
A faster process is possible if regulators rely substantially on powers and exemptions already available to them.
“Could that happen in six months? Potentially, particularly if the agencies rely heavily on existing authorities or exemptive mechanisms.”
Ebersole cautioned that the longer estimate already assumes regulators want the process to succeed. Litigation, disagreements between the SEC and CFTC, changing political priorities, or a conclusion that Congress must first pass legislation could push any U.S. launch further out.
U.S. traders already have limited exposure to perpetual products under regulated structures. In June, Kalshi filed with the CFTC to list perpetual futures linked to HYPE after rolling out Bitcoin and Ethereum perpetual contracts for U.S. customers.
Access to Hyperliquid itself remains more restricted. Coinbase added more than 290 Hyperliquid-powered perpetual markets to its Base App on Aug. 19, with leverage reaching as high as 50x on supported contracts, but U.S. users were excluded along with users in the United Kingdom and Canada.
Existing law could provide a faster but less certain route
Rather than waiting for Congress, the SEC and CFTC could conclude that their existing statutory powers are sufficient to establish a regulated framework, according to Ebersole. Such an approach could shorten the process, particularly if agencies use exemptions alongside existing derivatives and securities rules.
A legal constraint remains after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which ended the Chevron doctrine that had directed courts to defer to reasonable agency interpretations of ambiguous federal statutes.
“An agency cannot create statutory jurisdiction simply by interpreting an ambiguity in its favor,” Ebersole said.
If an SEC or CFTC interpretation were challenged, he said, a court would independently determine whether Congress had actually granted the agency authority over the product. Agency reasoning could still carry persuasive weight, but it would not receive Chevron-style deference simply because the underlying statute was ambiguous.
Congressional action would therefore provide a cleaner legal route, according to Ebersole, because lawmakers could expressly authorize perpetual products, divide responsibility between the SEC and CFTC, and establish the limits of each regulator’s authority.
Legislation carries its own timing problem. Ebersole said the congressional route could take considerably longer and may not result in a law at all.
The question is particularly relevant while the CLARITY Act remains unresolved in Washington. The legislation seeks to establish federal boundaries between digital commodities and securities, with the CFTC receiving additional authority over qualifying digital commodity markets while the SEC retains jurisdiction over securities.
A US perpetuals framework would not be limited to Hyperliquid
Any regulatory route created for Hyperliquid would also have consequences for competing U.S. trading platforms, Ebersole said.
Federal regulators could not realistically establish a lawful framework that applied only to one company. Once the SEC and CFTC set requirements for offering crypto perpetuals, other firms meeting the same regulatory standards would have grounds to seek permission to offer comparable products.
“Whatever pathway regulators create for Hyperliquid cannot realistically be Hyperliquid-specific,” Ebersole said.
Coinbase, Kraken, and other appropriately registered platforms would therefore have a strong basis to pursue similar products if regulators establish a workable U.S. framework, according to Ebersole.
“The larger significance of onshoring Hyperliquid is not simply whether one offshore platform can enter the United States. It is whether regulators are prepared to welcome a major product category that has largely developed outside the U.S. to regulated domestic competition.”
