Alexander Bechtel

By Alexander Bechtel, Claude Donzé, and Jascha Samadi

Even before SpaceX went public, the space company’s stock was already being traded on Hyperliquid, a platform with no trading hours and no physical shares. A glimpse of what could reshape financial markets.

On June 12, 2026, SpaceX celebrated the largest initial public offering in history. With proceeds of $75 billion and a valuation that had since risen to well over two trillion dollars, Elon Musk became, on paper, the world’s first trillionaire. Many traders had been eagerly awaiting this day, even though price discovery had long since begun. About two months before the bell rang on the Nasdaq, SpaceX’s “share price” was already being traded on Hyperliquid in the form of a synthetic contract called SPCX. One minute before SpaceX officially began trading on the Nasdaq, SPCX stood at $171. The stock opened at exactly that price.

From Crypto Marketplace to Financial Market Infrastructure

Hyperliquid is a trading platform that runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, on a custom-built blockchain. While traditional exchanges maintain their order books on central servers, Hyperliquid’s continuous list of all buy and sell orders is stored entirely on the blockchain, where it is also executed automatically. Trading is no longer limited to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin; it also includes stock indices, commodities such as oil and gold, and, more recently, companies prior to their initial public offerings (IPOs). The trading volume is substantial. According to the data provider DefiLlama, as of mid-June 2026, it ranged between five and eight billion dollars daily, reaching roughly the same scale as the Frankfurt Stock Exchange’s Xetra cash market.

Unlike on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange’s cash market, however, Hyperliquid does not trade actual shares, but rather so-called perpetual futures. Anyone who bought SPCX thus acquired a futures contract with no expiration date based on SpaceX’s valuation. Unlike traditional stocks, perpetual futures carry no voting rights and no claim to the underlying company. In return, leverage of up to forty times the investment is possible, which multiplies both profits and losses.

Nevertheless, Hyperliquid should not be dismissed as merely a playground for speculators. The benefits of a market that never closes became apparent in late February. When the U.S. and Israel launched their attacks on Iranian targets over the weekend of February 28, the established trading venues were closed. The perpetual contracts on Hyperliquid became one of the few liquid venues where the risk could be priced in. Gold rose by just over one percent, and oil by five percent. By the time the first traditional exchanges, such as the Comex futures exchange, reopened, the price of gold on the blockchain had already anticipated the shock.

This development could herald a shift toward a financial market infrastructure that no longer has closing times. Established exchanges are already taking action. In April, Nasdaq received approval to extend its stock trading hours to 23 hours a day, five days a week. But a market that never closes undermines a silent pillar of the financial system: the closing price. More depends on it than most people realize. Funds calculate their net asset value at a specific point in time; banks value collateral at the end of the day; and tax deadlines and quarterly financial statements all require a defined cutoff point. If this anchor disappears, the entire machinery of valuation, risk management, and supervision will have to define an artificial cutoff point that the market itself no longer recognizes.

At the same time, skeptics argue that it remains unclear whether continuous trading would smooth out or exacerbate price fluctuations. Liquidity could continue to concentrate in the traditional trading windows, while order books become thin at night and on weekends. Volatility would thus not be eliminated, but rather shifted to off-peak hours with low liquidity.

More Than Just a Trading Platform with Round-the-Clock Trading Hours

Hyperliquid, however, is more than just a trading platform with round-the-clock trading hours: Compared to traditional stock exchanges or even centralized crypto exchanges, Hyperliquid is not a traditional company, but rather a lean, decentralized infrastructure. It operates with just 10 to 15 employees. By comparison, Coinbase had around 4,300 employees in the first quarter of 2026, while the Deutsche Börse Group had more than 16,000.

The advantages of Hyperliquid are clear: access is open, costs are low, and every transaction is verifiable on the blockchain. The downside is the lack of investor protection, and there is still no identity verification in place. The platform is aware of this vulnerability and is seeking to join forces with policymakers. Earlier this year, the foundation behind Hyperliquid launched the Hyperliquid Policy Center in Washington and provided it with approximately $30 million in funding. Its mission is to advocate for the interests of the decentralized finance sector and negotiate its own rules with regulatory authorities.

For European service providers and investors, the legal situation is delicate. Ironically, MiCAR—the EU regulatory framework for crypto-assets—is unlikely to apply here. The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) is expected to classify perpetuals as derivatives and thus treat them as traditional financial instruments, which must comply with stricter rules than crypto-assets. However, these rules are tailored to traditional providers and are only of limited applicability to decentralized financial markets, which allow for settlement without intermediaries. Legal uncertainty remains, which in the long term can likely only be resolved through tailored regulations.

Will the bell soon fall silent forever?

Hyperliquid points in two directions at once. On the one hand, the platform turns the distant vision of round-the-clock trading into a technical reality: Before the stock bell rang, SpaceX had its share price calculated by machines that know no opening hours. On the other hand, Hyperliquid demonstrates that a stock exchange no longer necessarily has to be a large corporation with servers and thousands of employees, but can also function as a lean, decentralized infrastructure built from program code. Both developments challenge the certainties that have underpinned the financial system for decades. Whether continuous trading and decentralized settlement will prevail remains to be seen. The answer likely lies less in the technology itself than in how we use it.

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This article was originally published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) in German. For the original version, click here.

Disclaimer: The contents of the article reflect the private opinions of the authors.