The Hyperliquid Policy Center wants the European Commission to regulate crypto perpetual futures under MiFID II, the EU's rulebook for financial instruments first passed in 2014, instead of folding them into MiCA. Circle used the same MiCA review to push for changes to the regulation's stablecoin reserve rules. Both filings landed in the final days of a consultation the Commission had already extended once, from Aug. 31 to Sept. 30.
HPC wants perps treated as derivatives, ledger be damned
The group's core argument, laid out in a Sept. 30 letter from CEO Jake Chervinsky, is that classification "should follow the economic features of an instrument, and the ledger on which it is recorded should not be determinative." MiFID II's Annex I derivative categories already capture perpetual futures, so no new law is needed. The filing asks for "clarity in application, rather than new legislation."
The filing also fights to keep perps away from contracts for difference (CFDs), which ESMA restricted for retail traders in 2018. With a CFD, "the provider profits when its client loses," HPC wrote, while on a perps order book the venue isn't the counter‑party. That is a real distinction. It is also a convenient one for a policy shop funded by the Hyperliquid Foundation with 1 million HYPE tokens, worth about $29 million when the group launched in February.
HPC wants venues required to publish funding methodologies, maintenance margins, and liquidation thresholds ahead of time, plus confirmation that putting a regulated product on a public blockchain doesn't change what the product is. It points to Hyperliquid's HIP‑3 markets as the working example: a regulated firm builds a market on that infrastructure, sets leverage limits, gates access with an on‑chain allowlist, and offers it to clients as a regulated product. HIP‑3 hit 75 % of Hyperliquid's overall trading volume at one point in late July, per The Block's data, though it has since slid to roughly a quarter.
This is HPC's first filing outside the U.S. It made a similar pitch to the SEC and CFTC in August.
Circle wants the bank‑deposit floor gone
Circle's target is MiCA's rule that e‑money token issuers keep at least 30 % of reserves in commercial bank deposits, rising to 60 % for tokens the EBA deems "significant." The rule "increases exposure to the credit and counterparty risk of the banking sector," Circle wrote in a Thursday blog post from Patrick Hansen, its director of EU strategy and policy.
Circle has lived that risk. USDC briefly lost its $1 peg in March 2023 after the company disclosed $3.3 billion of its roughly $40 billion in reserves was sitting at Silicon Valley Bank, which had just collapsed.
The ECB agrees with Circle. The central bank and the national central banks of the European System of Central Banks also told the Commission to scrap the deposit minimums, proposing instead that a set share of reserves mature within one and five working days. If both the issuer and the central bank advocate for the same deregulation, it could increase the likelihood that the rule will be changed.
Circle's other data point is awkward for Brussels. Of the top 25 stablecoins globally by market cap, only three are MiCA‑regulated, the company said, arguing the gap is MiCA's perimeter failing to capture the biggest tokens. Circle, which has issued USDC and EURC through its French entity since July 2024 and calls itself the largest authorized e‑money token issuer under MiCA, also wants two EBA technical‑standard limits thrown out, including a 35 % cap on exposure to any single government that it called "impossible" for dollar‑denominated tokens.
Circle declined to share its full filing with The Block. "We'll let the blog speak for itself," said Greg Vadala, Circle's senior director of global corporate communications.
My take
Both filings are self‑interested. HPC wants perps legitimized inside a framework its parent chain can plug into. Circle wants to hold fewer bank deposits and more government paper, which is safer and happens to be more profitable. But self‑interest doesn't make the arguments wrong. The CFD distinction is genuine, and the SVB de‑peg is a compelling case against deposit floors.
What to watch is whether the Commission reads "the ledger doesn't matter" as a principle or as a loophole. Nobody knows how this will play out. With the ECB on Circle's side, the reserve‑rule changes look like the most likely first move.
Sources