Singapore regulator puts Hyperliquid on notice, but the perp DEX says it never claimed a license anyway 🛎️

The Monetary Authority of Singapore added decentralized perpetuals exchange Hyperliquid to its Investor Alert List on Friday, flagging the Hyper Foundation website and the Hyperliquid trading app as entities that may be wrongly perceived as licensed or regulated by the city-state's central bank and financial regulator. Inclusion on the list is a consumer protection measure and does not constitute a ban or enforcement action. The same list already includes crypto exchanges Bybit, which MAS added on June 17, as well as KuCoin and Bitget. Cointelegraph said it reached out to MAS for comment but did not receive a response before publication.

Hyperliquid responded that it has never claimed to be licensed or authorized by MAS and that nothing about its permissionless infrastructure has changed. "The Hyperliquid ecosystem remains committed to engaging collaboratively and constructively with regulators and institutions globally and to supporting clear, well-designed frameworks for onchain finance," the platform wrote in a Friday X post. Ripple separately joined a Singapore sandbox to test RLUSD in trade finance.

According to CoinGecko, Hyperliquid ranks as the ninth-largest decentralized exchange by trading volume, while DefiLlama estimates it holds about $5.7 billion in total value locked. MAS has steadily tightened oversight of the cryptocurrency industry, and in May 2025 it ordered crypto companies serving overseas customers to either obtain licenses or cease operations, framing the policy as a long-standing regulatory position rather than a shift in approach. The directive closed a loophole that had allowed some Singapore-based crypto firms to avoid licensing by serving only overseas customers, with MAS saying it had consistently communicated its position since 2022 and was ending the transition period for firms that had continued operating without a license. The measures were intended to strengthen consumer protection and align Singapore's crypto framework with international Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism standards.