On February 18, 2026, the Hyperliquid Policy Center opened its doors in Washington, D.C., armed with a $29 million war chest and a mandate to legalize perpetual derivatives in the United States. Led by veteran crypto attorney Jake Chervinsky — formerly of the Blockchain Association and Variant Fu...
"Financial markets are migrating onto public blockchains because they offer efficiency, transparency, and resilience that legacy systems cannot match. Now the United States must choose: we can either adopt new rules that allow this innovation to thrive here at home, or we can wait and watch as other nations seize the opportunity." — Jake Chervinsky, CEO, Hyperliquid Policy Center
On February 18, 2026, the Hyperliquid Policy Center opened its doors in Washington, D.C., armed with a $29 million war chest and a mandate to legalize perpetual derivatives in the United States. Led by veteran crypto attorney Jake Chervinsky — formerly of the Blockchain Association and Variant Fund — the nonprofit represents the single largest financial commitment by a DeFi protocol to reshape American financial regulation.
The timing is not accidental. Hyperliquid now commands approximately 70% of the on-chain perpetual futures market, processing over $250 billion in monthly volume and generating nearly $1 billion in cumulative revenue. Yet the product that made it dominant — the perpetual swap — remains in a legal gray area domestically. The Hyperliquid Policy Center exists to close that gap, and its launch signals a structural shift in how DeFi protocols engage with power.
This is no longer crypto asking Washington for permission. This is crypto hiring Washington's own lawyers, opening offices on K Street, and writing the rules it wants to live under.
The Hyperliquid Policy Center (HPC) launched as an independent 501(c)(4) nonprofit research and advocacy organization. The Hyper Foundation seeded it with 1 million HYPE tokens — valued at approximately $29 million at current prices — making it one of the most well-funded single-protocol policy initiatives in crypto history.
The founding team reads like a who's who of crypto-native policy talent:
The organization is actively hiring a chief of staff, head of communications, and head of government relations — signaling a permanent Washington presence, not a pop-up campaign.
HPC's mission centers on three pillars: conducting original research on decentralized market infrastructure, engaging directly with lawmakers and regulators, and proposing practical regulatory frameworks — with perpetual derivatives as the top priority.
Perpetual futures — contracts that never expire and use a funding rate mechanism to track spot prices — are the single most traded instrument in crypto. Globally, perpetual futures dominate derivatives markets, with monthly on-chain volumes alone surpassing $1.2 trillion by late 2025. Offshore centralized exchanges like Binance process hundreds of billions more.
Yet until July 2025, no regulated U.S. exchange offered perpetual futures. The instrument existed in a jurisdictional no-man's land — neither clearly a security nor a traditional commodity future, and therefore unlisted by exchanges subject to SEC or CFTC oversight.
That changed when Coinbase Derivatives filed self-certifications for Bitcoin and Ethereum perpetual futures contracts in June 2025. The CFTC raised no objection, and trading began on July 21, 2025 — marking the first time a CFTC-registered designated contract market listed perpetual-style products. The contracts offer up to 10x leverage, 24/7 trading, and are technically structured as long-dated futures with five-year expirations.
But there is a critical distinction between what Coinbase achieved and what Hyperliquid wants. Coinbase's perpetual futures run on a centralized, regulated exchange. Hyperliquid's perpetual futures run on a fully on-chain order book with no centralized intermediary. The question HPC aims to answer: can decentralized perpetual derivatives markets receive the same regulatory blessing?
Chervinsky has framed perpetuals as "superior to options or futures since they are simpler" — a direct challenge to the traditional derivatives taxonomy that regulators rely on.
The HPC launch arrives during what may be the most favorable regulatory moment DeFi has ever experienced.
Project Crypto. On January 29, 2026, the SEC and CFTC held a landmark joint event called "Harmonization: U.S. Financial Leadership in the Crypto Era." Both agency chairs publicly committed to drawing "bright lines" between their jurisdictions, with CFTC Chairman Selig endorsing the view that "most crypto assets trading today are not securities." The joint initiative — branded Project Crypto — operates on three pillars: regulatory clarity, inter-agency coordination, and support for permissionless innovation.
CFTC's Perps Agenda. Chairman Selig has explicitly named the onshoring of offshore perpetual futures contracts as an agency priority. The CFTC issued a Request for Comment on perpetual derivatives in April 2025 and has signaled appetite for frameworks that would allow true perpetual products — not just long-dated workarounds — to trade on U.S. platforms.
The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is pushing for passage by July 2026. The legislation would grant substantial oversight authority to the CFTC, potentially paving the way for new financial products including additional cryptocurrency ETFs and — critically — a clearer legal path for on-chain derivatives.
SEC's Strategic Pivot. At ETHDenver on February 18, 2026, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins unveiled a strategic plan prioritizing clear guidelines over enforcement, including an innovation exemption and new custody standards.
This convergence of regulatory tailwinds is precisely what makes HPC's timing strategic. The rules are being written now. HPC wants to be in the room when they are.
Understanding why Hyperliquid is spending $29 million on policy requires understanding what it stands to gain.
Hyperliquid has built one of the most economically efficient protocols in DeFi:
At current levels, Hyperliquid generates more revenue than many publicly traded financial technology companies. The HYPE token trades at approximately $29, supported by a market capitalization that reflects the protocol's dominant market position.
If perpetual derivatives gain full regulatory clarity in the United States, the addressable market for Hyperliquid expands dramatically. American retail and institutional traders currently locked out of on-chain perps — or forced to use offshore venues with higher counterparty risk — would gain access to a regulated, on-chain alternative. For a protocol already processing $250 billion monthly, U.S. market access represents a step-function increase in volume and revenue.
The $29 million policy investment is, viewed through this lens, a cost of market acquisition.
Hyperliquid is not the first crypto project to open a Washington office. The policy landscape is now dense with advocacy organizations:
Crypto lobbying spending surged 66% in 2025 to $40.6 million. Fairshake, the largest crypto PAC, raised over $260 million during the 2023-24 election cycle and deployed $195.8 million.
What distinguishes HPC is focus and funding density. Most existing organizations represent broad coalitions with diverse — sometimes conflicting — interests. HPC represents one protocol's specific regulatory need: making decentralized perpetual derivatives legal and regulated in the U.S. Its $29 million endowment exceeds the annual budgets of most competing organizations.
This specificity is both a strength and a limitation. HPC can move faster and argue more coherently than multi-stakeholder coalitions. But it also raises questions about whether regulators will view protocol-funded advocacy as genuine policy research or sophisticated lobbying for a single company's financial interest.
The HPC launch represents a maturation in how DeFi engages with governance. Three implications stand out:
1. Protocols as Political Actors. Hyperliquid's move follows the Solana Policy Institute and DeFi Education Fund in establishing that individual protocols or ecosystems now act as independent political entities — funding their own research, hiring their own policy teams, and advancing their own regulatory agendas. This is a fundamental shift from crypto's early libertarian ethos of operating outside government.
2. Revenue Justifies Advocacy. Hyperliquid can afford a $29 million policy operation because it generates nearly $1 billion in revenue. This is the flywheel that the economic value framework predicts: protocols that capture real economic value — not speculative token appreciation — have the resources to invest in their own institutional survival. The era of DeFi protocols as serious economic actors is here.
3. The Perps Question Is the DeFi Question. Whether perpetual derivatives can operate legally on decentralized infrastructure is a proxy question for whether any financial product can. If regulators conclude that a fully on-chain order book can meet compliance standards for derivatives — the most heavily regulated corner of financial markets — it establishes precedent for every other DeFi product.
The Hyperliquid Policy Center is not simply another crypto lobbying shop. It is a $29 million bet that the most popular financial instrument in crypto — the perpetual swap — can be legalized on fully decentralized infrastructure in the most heavily regulated financial market in the world.
If HPC succeeds, the implications extend far beyond Hyperliquid. A regulatory framework that accommodates decentralized derivatives would validate the core premise of DeFi: that financial markets can operate without centralized intermediaries while still meeting regulatory standards for investor protection.
If it fails, the perpetual derivatives market will continue to operate offshore, American traders will continue to be excluded from on-chain innovation, and the U.S. will cede ground in the global competition for financial technology leadership.
Either way, the fact that a DeFi protocol is investing $29 million in a permanent Washington policy operation — staffed by lawyers from Sullivan & Cromwell and Baker McKenzie — tells us something important about where crypto is headed. The industry is no longer building outside the system. It is buying its way in.