ICE, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, is taking a minority stake in trade.xyz, the largest builder of markets on Hyperliquid, to bring its equity perpetuals to the US, with investor Stan Druckenmiller also on board.

What's the Scoop?

• The Plan: Subject to CFTC approval, the pair plan a new US market, ICE[XYZ], with its own exchange and clearing (the system that settles trades) built on Hyperliquid. It would list stocks, indices, commodities, currencies and crypto for ID-verified traders, reached through brokers and ICE's joint venture with OKX. Deal terms and a launch date weren't disclosed.

• The Backers: ICE will exclusively run trade.xyz's US markets and says its business is more than 99% institutional today, so retail is new ground for it. Druckenmiller wrote that he is "excited to be an investor in trade(xyz)" and plans to use the product himself.

• Zooming Out: trade.xyz says its Hyperliquid markets passed $650B in volume in just over a year, and they will keep running. The deal lands days after Hyperliquid backed Kraken parent Payward's push for US-regulated perps, and ICE already agreed to invest up to $2B in Polymarket. HYPE is up ~13% in 24 hours, per CoinGecko.