First European foray for Hyperliquid. The Hyperliquid Policy Center (HPC) has submitted its response to the Brussels consultation on the review of MiCA. This political arm of the leader in decentralized perpetual contract exchanges thus signs its first regulatory filing outside the United States.
His request is contained in a few words. HPC relies on the texts in force and the guidelines of ESMA (the European financial markets authority). No question, therefore, of writing a new regime for crypto derivatives.
Key Points
The Hyperliquid Policy Center has signed its first regulatory response outside the United States.
Perpetual contracts would remain governed by existing financial texts, without new law.
There is no question of applying the rules of CFDs and their leverage restricted to 2:1 to them.
He calls for an end to duplicate declarations of onchain data and access to international notebooks.
On the contrary, ESMA is calling for a tightening of the screws on DeFi and non-EU platforms.
Hyperliquid asks Brussels not to rewrite MiCA
Fully applicable since December 30, 2024, MiCA voluntarily leaves derivative products outside its scope. However, perpetual contracts (futures contracts without expiry) are the core business of Hyperliquid. They therefore come under MiFID II, the European directive on markets in financial instruments.
For HPC, this architecture is sufficient. The qualification of an asset must follow its economic substance, not the technical form of its packaging. The ESMA has also set in December 2024 the criteria which make a crypto-asset a financial instrument, in guidelines. HPC relies on their paragraph 47, which already ranks perps among derivatives.
Qualification as a financial instrument requires both the required authorization and access for individuals. It thus decides, in practice, the viability of a market in Europe. Brussels is also moving forward on a larger project. At the end of 2025, the Commission proposed to entrust ESMA with the supervision of the largest crypto platforms. This supervision today remains fragmented between twenty-seven national regulators.
Order book against CFD, the fault line for perps
The file then focuses on the restrictions imposed on individuals. Since 2018, ESMA and then national regulators have capped the leverage of crypto CFDs (contracts for difference) at 2:1. These rules also impose negative balance protection and automatic liquidation at 50% of the margin. On the other hand, Hyperliquid displays up to 40 times the stake on bitcoin and 25 times on ether.
These safeguards targeted bilateral contracts, where the broker bets against its own client. HPC contests the assimilation. The collateral is deposited in advance and the exposure can never exceed the stake. On a central order book, users exchange positions with each other at the displayed price. The platform then has no interest in seeing the individual lose.
Onchain data and access to global notebooks: HPC versus ESMA
HPC also highlights the verifiability of public blockchains. He considers it redundant to impose declarations on data already registered on-chain and time-stamped. Any regulator can consult them. Every order, liquidation, and transfer placed on Hyperliquid is written on its own chain. It also requires that each platform publish the funding calculation method before opening a market. Maintenance margins and liquidation thresholds should follow the same regime.
HPC finally pleads for European investors to maintain access to global order books. However, European law prohibits platforms from third countries from approaching residents of the Union. Only reverse solicitation (when the customer comes on his own) escapes this rule. International players therefore partition their liquidity jurisdiction by jurisdiction. And fragmented liquidity is paid for in wider price gaps (spreads) and degraded executions (slippage).
The European regulator is pulling in the other direction. ESMA published its own response to the consultation on September 30. She calls for strengthened powers against platforms from third countries which approach Europeans without approval. Its text also provides for an approved service for access gateways to DeFi protocols. At the same time, the authority is asking for clearer criteria to say what is really decentralized.
