EU Perpetual Futures Regulation: Hyperliquid Wants MiFID II, Not MiCA

The Hyperliquid Policy Center filed its first non-US regulatory submission on September 30, and it did not ask Brussels for a new rulebook. It asked for the opposite. The group told the European Commission that crypto perpetual futures already fit inside MiFID II, the derivatives framework the EU wrote in 2014, and that the right move is clarification rather than a purpose-built category under MiCA. For anyone trading perps with EU exposure, this is the most consequential piece of EU perpetual futures regulation news since the MiCA review opened.

The submission landed on the final day of a consultation window that the Commission had already extended once, from August 31 to September 30, after opening it on May 20, according to The Block. Circle filed the same day on stablecoin reserve rules. Deutsche Borse Group and the Chamber of Progress also responded.

What the Hyperliquid Policy Center Actually Filed

The Hyperliquid Policy Center was set up in February 2026 with 1 million HYPE tokens from the Hyperliquid Foundation, worth roughly $29 million at the time, per The Block. Its chief executive is Jake Chervinsky. Until September 30 its filings had been domestic. This was the first one aimed at a non-US regulator.

The core claim is narrow and technical. HPC argues that a perpetual future is a derivative by economic construction, and that the venue recording it does not change what it is. The Block quotes the group's position directly: "the ledger on which it is recorded should not be determinative." If MiFID II's existing derivative categories already capture the instrument, then writing a separate onchain-perps category under MiCA adds a second rulebook for the same product.

HPC did not ask for an exemption. It asked for the Commission to say plainly which existing category applies, so that venues and intermediaries know which authorisation regime they are operating under.

Why MiFID II Classification Changes the Operating Rules

The practical difference is not cosmetic. MiCA was built around crypto-asset issuance, custody, and service provision. MiFID II was built around investment firms, trading venues, best execution, position reporting, and market abuse surveillance. Those are the rules that actually govern how a derivatives book is run in the EU.

Putting perps under MiFID II means they inherit transaction reporting, venue authorisation, and position management obligations that already exist for futures and swaps. It also means EU-regulated intermediaries get a known category to point at when they want to offer the product, instead of waiting for a bespoke regime that may take years.

The flip side is that MiFID II carries the full weight of a traditional derivatives regime, including the product intervention powers that European regulators have used aggressively against retail contracts for difference. Which brings up the part of the submission that does the most work.

The CFD Distinction Is the Whole Argument

European regulators have spent years restricting retail CFDs. If perps get read as CFDs, the EU retail market for them effectively closes. HPC spent a meaningful share of its filing drawing a line between the two.

The argument reported by Crypto Times is structural. A traditional CFD provider is the counterparty to its client. On an onchain perps order book, participants trade against each other and, as The Block summarised HPC's position, "the trading venue isn't itself the counterparty." That removes the conflict of interest that drove most of the European CFD restrictions in the first place.

HPC pairs that with a transparency claim: funding payments, liquidations, and transaction activity are publicly verifiable on an order book that settles onchain. A retail CFD book is not observable by anyone outside the provider. Whether Brussels finds that persuasive is the open question, and it is the one that decides how accessible EU perp markets stay.

Onchain Records Proposed as Regulatory Reporting

The submission goes one step further and suggests that publicly accessible blockchain records could satisfy some EU reporting requirements outright. Orders, trades, and liquidations already generate records that supervisors can read, so the argument is that a reporting obligation designed for opaque venues is partly redundant where the venue is transparent by construction.

That proposal matters to traders for a reason that has nothing to do with compliance costs. If supervisors begin treating onchain records as the official audit trail, the data a retail trader can already pull from a public order book becomes the same data a regulator uses. The information asymmetry between a European trading desk and someone reading the chain narrows rather than widens.

HPC also drew a separate line around prediction markets, arguing that contracts referencing financial variables such as interest rates, inflation, or commodity prices sit closer to financial derivatives than contracts on non-financial events. Hyperliquid's HIP-4 outcome markets make that distinction commercially relevant, not academic.

What to Watch Before the Commission Responds

Nothing is decided. A consultation response is an input, and the Commission has given no timeline for how it will treat perpetual contracts in the MiCA review output. Circle's parallel push on reserve rules has the European Central Bank on its side regarding deposit minimums, per The Block. HPC has no equivalent public backer yet.

Two things are worth tracking. The first is whether any EU-authorised venue publicly positions itself around MiFID II perps before the Commission rules, because that is the signal that legal teams expect the classification to land. The second is EU-session flow in HL perps. Regulatory classification changes who can access a book, and access changes depth, spread, and the time of day at which size actually moves.

That second one is measurable now rather than after the fact. On Buildix you can split cumulative volume delta and order book imbalance by session across 530+ Hyperliquid pairs, which is how you tell whether European participation is already building ahead of a decision or waiting for it.

Rulebooks move slowly and order books do not. The filing tells you which direction Hyperliquid wants European access to go. The session data tells you whether anyone is positioning for it.