Hyperliquid Policy Center CEO Says Exchanges Need Public Blockchains to Stay Competitive

Wall Street has a choice, Jake Chervinsky and Rebecca Rettig wrote in Fortune on September 18: it can build on public blockchains, or it can watch its customers leave for the institutions that do.

The two authors are not neutral parties. Chervinsky is the founder and chief executive of the Hyperliquid Policy Center, a research and advocacy group that launched in Washington, D.C. on February 18, 2026. Rettig is chief operating officer and chief legal officer at Jito Labs, which builds tools for Solana. The op-ed is an argument for a market they are both positioned in.

Here is what they claim, and what they say the rules already do.

The GENIUS Act Puts the Duties on Issuers

The op-ed points to the GENIUS Act, the federal stablecoin law enacted last year, as the piece of regulation that makes onchain dollars usable by institutions. As the authors describe it, "permitted issuers," identifiable companies that back the assets and know their customers, carry the obligations for reserves, redemptions, anti-money laundering and sanctions. The networks underneath them are left alone.

That split is the part a holder should read closely. The compliance burden sits on a named company rather than on the blockchain, which is why a regulated stablecoin can be handed to a bank's risk team at all. In the authors' words, a regulated stablecoin relies on "the trust of an issuer who must comply with the federal stablecoin legislation enacted last year known as the GENIUS Act."

More than $300 billion of stablecoins are outstanding today, and supply has continued growing through a downturn that cut the value of nearly every other digital asset.

That figure is from the op-ed itself, and it is the scale the authors are arguing about.

The Choice Is the US or Somewhere Else

Chervinsky made the same fork in policy terms when the Center launched in February. "Financial markets are migrating onto public blockchains because they offer efficiency, transparency, and resilience that legacy systems cannot match," he said then.

He then framed the decision as one Washington has not yet made: "Now the United States must choose: we can either adopt new rules that allow this innovation to thrive here at home, or we can wait and watch as other nations seize the opportunity."

Both statements are arguments about direction, not measurements of how far the migration has gone. The op-ed offers no figure for how much trading has already moved onchain, and no list of which institutions have committed to it.

Where Hyperliquid Fits

The Center is funded by the ecosystem it advocates for. The Hyper Foundation, which supports the growth of Hyperliquid, contributed 1,000,000 HYPE tokens to fund the launch, and HPC is structured as a 501(c)(4) research and advocacy organization. Its stated purpose is "advancing a clear, regulated path for decentralized finance to thrive in the United States."

That funding ties the group's output to HYPE holders, which is worth knowing when weighing the argument. It does not settle whether the argument is right.

What the Two Authors Cannot Control

The op-ed draws the line at a condition: if customers do follow the venues that settle on public networks, waiting becomes the expensive option for the firms that do not move. The rules that would let the migration happen on US terms are not written yet.

For readers holding stablecoins or exchange tokens, the thing to watch is the same either way: whether the next round of US rulemaking treats public networks as infrastructure to build on, or as something to route around. Chervinsky has staked his organization on the first answer.