The Hyperliquid Policy Center (HPC) made its position clear in a filing with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Thursday, August 27, 2026, pressing the regulator to prioritize perpetual contracts in its innovation agenda. The filing lands as the latest signal to US traders, who have been shut out of a derivatives market that has grown beyond $500 billion in offshore volume.

Perpetual contracts took over the CFTC meeting

The statement arrives shortly after the CFTC held its first Innovation Advisory Committee meeting on August 20. Perpetual contracts were not part of the main agenda, which covered digital assets, artificial intelligence, and prediction markets. According to HPC, committee members nonetheless could not stop bringing up the topic of perpetual contracts in each of the meeting's three sessions.

HPC took that response as proof of demand and built its statement around four arguments:

• perpetual contracts are critical to the CFTC's innovation work;
• they meet real hedging needs;
• a friendlier CFTC is presently bringing these markets onshore; and
• public blockchains can modernize the plumbing of the derivatives market, effectively rewriting the law.

Jake Chervinsky, chief executive of HPC, signed the statement alongside senior counsel Brad Bourque, and HPC submitted it to Commission Secretary Christopher Kirkpatrick. HPC describes itself as an independent research and advocacy organization with ties to the Hyperliquid Foundation, which founded the center in February 2026. The full statement is available on the Hyperliquid Policy Center's official website.

Who raised perpetuals at the committee meeting

In the statement, HPC named the committee members who brought up perpetual contracts, citing timestamps from the meeting webcast.

Tyler Winklevoss of Gemini said that US firms are being left behind as perpetual contracts make up a bulk of global digital assets trading volume. Don Wilson of DRW views perpetuals as risk tools that registered funds would rather hold next to dated futures. Brian Armstrong of Coinbase, Raghu Yarlagadda of FalconX, and Multicoin's Tushar Jain also spoke in favor of perpetuals.

How a contract can track a price despite never expiring

A large part of HPC's filing centers on the mechanics of a perpetual contract. A perpetual contract has no settlement date and cannot be rolled over or delivered. Rather than expiring, money is transferred between long and short holders through a recurring funding payment, a mechanism designed to pull the contract's price back toward a reference price.

HPC views this as a better solution for exposures that do not end. The filing gives three examples: an airline consuming aviation fuel, a fund that manages portfolio risk, and an AI developer facing rising compute costs. All three carry costs that never stop, and hedging such exposures with dated futures would push traders through a roll cycle that introduces timing risk and transaction costs.

For market participants, that detail matters because the debate is no longer abstract: it is about which contract design regulators will be willing to accommodate as more activity moves into US venues and as products tied to digital assets, energy, and other continuously priced exposures get tested in public rulemaking.

A friendlier CFTC docket, with a lawsuit to match

The statement arrives at a moment when the CFTC has developed a friendlier stance toward perpetuals. In May, the CFTC approved the first US-listed perpetual futures contract, Kalshi's BTCPERP, and released a policy statement and staff guidance that addressed continuous trading. In June, the agency requested comment on extending the product to storable energy commodities.

HPC and the HIP-3 deployer trade[XYZ] issued a joint response to the energy request on August 26. Two days earlier, on August 24, HPC filed a separate response asking the SEC and CFTC to treat qualifying equity perpetuals as security futures.

Walt Lukken of the FIA released committee figures showing that the agency oversees 30 designated contract markets, up from 16 in 2003, with 17 applications pending. The agency also oversees 6,700 listed contracts, up from 2,100 in 2023.

Not everyone is on board, though. CME Group took the CFTC to court in June, arguing that perpetuals are swaps rather than futures, and CME's outgoing chief, Terry Duffy, has referred to the product as “a disaster waiting to happen.”