Druckenmiller backs push to bring risky crypto-style bets to Wall Street

Perpetual futures, contracts without expiry that track an asset's price, have traded in enormous volume on offshore venues such as Binance and Bybit but have never had a legal home in the United States. Hyperliquid built the on-chain infrastructure for fast, leveraged perps outside that regulatory gap. Trade.xyz is now licensing that engine for a US-regulated wrapper, with Intercontinental Exchange, the parent of the New York Stock Exchange, and Duquesne Capital founder Stan Druckenmiller both taking stakes.

If approved, US traders get a legal, 24/7 venue for perpetual futures on stocks, indexes, commodities and currencies, something currently available only through offshore accounts that fall outside domestic oversight. Institutions that have stayed away from crypto-native perps for compliance reasons gain a regulated on-ramp, while offshore exchanges risk losing US volume to a licensed competitor. Hyperliquid, previously known mainly to crypto-native traders, picks up Wall Street-grade validation it did not have before.

Plugging NYSE's parent into a blockchain-based matching engine tests what 'regulated' means once the infrastructure underneath is the same permissionless system crypto traders already use. ICE is not building a rival perp engine; it is renting legitimacy to one that already exists outside traditional market structure, which raises a fair question about where oversight actually sits once trades settle on Hyperliquid's chain rather than inside ICE's own systems.

Nothing here is live: Trade.xyz's US market still needs regulatory sign-off, and no agency or timeline has been named publicly since Druckenmiller and ICE's October 29 disclosures. The approval decision, whenever it comes, will determine whether regulated 24/7 perpetual futures actually launch in the US or remain another announced-but-unbuilt crypto product, and will set a precedent other exchanges watching Hyperliquid's model will measure themselves against.