In less than three years, Hyperliquide has become one of the dominant players in crypto trading, with volumes that rival long-established exchanges like Binance and Coinbase. Now the company is also seeking to flex its political muscle. On Wednesday, the Hyperliquid Policy Center launched in Washington, DC with the aim of creating a legal pathway for the widespread adoption of decentralized finance, or DeFi, in the United States.
The new body’s first CEO is Jake Chervinsky, a longtime cryptocurrency attorney who played a key role in helping the industry find its place on Capitol Hill. He previously held leadership roles at trade group Blockchain Association and venture capital firm Variant, and worked as an associate at Baker McKenzie.
The arrival of the Hyperliquid Policy Center comes at a time when the crypto industry, which once eschewed anything related to Washington, D.C., is supporting a growing number of policy and lobbying centers, including the DeFi Education Fund. Chervinsky, however, argued that the new center had a distinct role.
“We are at a moment where the United States faces a great challenge to rewrite the rules of DeFi’s new chapter,” Chervinsky said. Fortuneexplaining that the Hyperliquid Center would seek to help Congress and federal agencies understand the technology behind decentralized finance and provide expertise to help regulators write rules to integrate it into the financial system.
Chervinsky added that current regulatory structures were designed in an analog era and are unable to accommodate new types of transactions such as decentralized protocols, which allow participants to exchange assets on automated platforms that are not controlled by any company or individual.
One of the main priorities of the new center will be to develop a legal framework for perpetual derivatives. Known colloquially as “perps,” these instruments are a type of derivative that does not expire and, according to Chervinsky, are superior to options or futures because they are simpler and provide more direct exposure to the underlying asset. Currently, criminals account for a huge volume of trading on offshore crypto exchanges, but are not yet part of the traditional financial sector.
To support the work of the new center, a foundation linked to Hyperliquide is donating one million native tokens of the platform, HYPE, currently worth around $28 million. In addition to Chervinsky, the organization’s founding team includes policy advisor Brad Bourque, a former partner at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, and policy director Salah Ghazzal, previously policy manager at Variant. The center is currently recruiting for the positions of Chief of Staff, Chief of Communications and Chief of Government Relations.
