Jeff Yan pitches US oversight of the firms deploying markets on Hyperliquid

The stake is the one part of the pitch with a number on it. Anyone deploying a market through HIP-3 must lock up 500,000 HYPE for at least 183 days ^[11], and Yan's case is that this same party is the one a regulator should hold to account. "The regulation sits at the layer where there are controls, and indeed the deployers are the ones that exercise these controls," Yan said ^[2]. Crypto Briefing added that the CFTC already knows how to supervise clearing firms, futures commission merchants and exchanges ^[9].

In our view the pitch is coherent, with one soft spot: control is a test, and a regulator can apply it to more than one party. If the CFTC finds controls at the chain level too, the carve-out fails, and that would be the plainest evidence against this reading. Nothing the sources report says how Michael Selig's agency would rule.

Hyperliquid is funding the conversation and leaving the licence to others. The Hyperliquid Policy Center received 1 million HYPE in February to engage the CFTC and SEC ^[13]. That equals two deployer stakes (1,000,000 / 500,000) ^[16]. Yan spoke on Oct. 15 ^[1], 57 days after Trump said on Aug. 19 that Selig was actively working to bring Hyperliquid into US markets in a fully legal way ^[7][17]. Crypto Briefing noted that Hyperliquid had been preparing for the conversation well before Trump weighed in ^[15].

The sources describe Payward's product differently. Crypto Briefing calls the structure a working version of Yan's pitch, with Hyperliquid's markets supplying the underlying activity ^[18]. CoinDesk says Payward plans to offer derivatives using Hyperliquid's technology through a regulated exchange ^[6]. A market deployed on the chain would carry the 500,000 HYPE stake and would test the operator model directly; a regulated exchange that borrows the technology would not. The sources do not say which one Payward is building.

There is a milder way to be wrong. The CFTC could accept the split and US volume could still stay small, because every customer would arrive through a permissioned wrapper. We would not rule that out.

Yan framed the ask as additive. "We're not trying to displace anything," he said. "In fact, I think the technology can benefit everyone who currently operates markets in a more traditional setting." ^[3]