Hyperliquid Urges MiFID Rules for Perpetuals

The Hyperliquid Policy Center on 30 September 2026 published its first response to a European consultation that was not aimed at the United States. The filing is the Hyperliquid Policy Center MiCA perpetual futures MiFID argument in short form: perpetual futures should stay under the existing EU market-rulebook, and they should not be treated like contracts for difference. The Block reported the same letter on 1 October. The consultation closed on 30 September.

What happened

The center's blog says the letter is its first non-US response, and that the consultation is the European Commission's review of MiCA, the Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation. MiCA is the EU statute for crypto-asset issuers and service providers. The letter is dated 30 September, which is also the day the consultation closed. The Block's report on 1 October attributes the letter to Jake Chervinsky, the center's chief executive.

The instrument at issue is the perpetual future. A future is a contract tied to the price of something else. A perpetual is that idea without an expiry date. There is no day when the contract simply ends and settles on a calendar.

Funding payments, margin, and close-out rules are how venues keep that open-ended contract inside a risk system. Funding is the periodic payment that pulls the contract's price back toward the underlying market. Margin is the collateral posted against the position.

Close-out is the process for shutting the position when the collateral is no longer enough. The center asks the Commission to require that those three sets of rules be published.

The legal home the center wants is MiFID II, the EU directive that governs investment firms and trading venues. Classification, it says, should follow economics rather than the ledger. In plain words, a supervisor should look at what the contract does, not at whether the record of it sits on a blockchain. The same letter says perpetuals should not be treated like CFDs.

A contract for difference pays the change in price between two moments and does not deliver the underlying asset. The center's point is that a perpetual future is not that product, and should not be regulated as if it were.

The blog post is the center's account of the filing. The Block's report, which dates the letter to 30 September and names Chervinsky, is its 1 October story.

Why it matters

Europe already has a thick rulebook for derivatives. MiFID II is the core of it. MiCA is the newer statute for crypto assets. The boundary between them is where a product can be pushed into the wrong box.

If a perpetual is pulled into MiCA because it is traded on a ledger, the economic character of the contract stops being the test. The center's phrase, classification by economics rather than by ledger, is a request to refuse that shortcut. A blockchain entry would not, on this view, decide the statute. The payoff and the obligations would.

The CFD comparison is the specific misclassification the letter warns against. CFDs are a known retail derivative, with a known set of EU conduct rules. Calling a perpetual a CFD would import that regime. Leaving it under MiFID II would keep it with futures and other instruments judged by how they work.

The letter does not, in the facts used here, draft the MiFID articles line by line. It states the classification it wants, and it states the classification it rejects.

Publication of funding, margin, and close-out rules is the operational half of the ask. A perpetual without an expiry depends on those rules to stay understandable. Traders, and supervisors, cannot see the risk of an open-ended contract if the funding formula, the collateral demand, and the close-out process are private. The center is not, on the blog's account, asking Brussels to invent a new exchange.

It is asking the Commission to require that the rules which already make a perpetual function be published. What those rules should say in detail is not specified in the materials used here, and this article does not invent the percentages or the timelines.

The timing is tight in a way that matters for process. The blog and the letter are both dated 30 September, the day the consultation closed. The Block wrote it up the next day. A first non-US response means the center had not previously answered a European consultation, on its own description.

The document is now in the pile the Commission has to read. It is not, by being filed, a change to MiCA or to MiFID II.

For related EU context, see Circle reserve review and SEC custody proposal.

What's next

The Commission has the letter. It has not, in the reports used here, answered it. No revised text of MiCA, and no decision to leave perpetuals under MiFID II, is announced. The consultation's close on 30 September marks the end of the submission window The Block reported, not the end of the policy argument.

What the center has put on the record can be stated without stretching it. Perpetual futures should remain under MiFID II. They should be classified by their economics, not by the ledger they are recorded on. They should not be treated like CFDs.

Funding, margin, and close-out rules should have to be published. The letter that says so is dated 30 September 2026, signed in The Block's account by Jake Chervinsky, and described by the center as its first non-US response.

Until Brussels speaks, those sentences are a request. Firms that trade perpetuals in the EU remain under whatever classification applies today. The October reporting tells them what one policy center wants the classification to be.