Crypto
Hyperliquid Is on Singapore’s Alert List. Here’s What Compliance Teams Should Do
MAS added Hyperliquid to its Investor Alert List on 26 June and says it is not a ban or a finding of wrongdoing. Here is what is confirmed, what is not, and what firms that use decentralized derivatives should do.
Roland Cinco 4 min read
Signal Spotlight · DeFi derivatives and the Singapore alert list
What happened
According to Cointelegraph and crypto.news, MAS added Hyperliquid on Friday 26 June 2026. The entry covers the Hyper Foundation website and the Hyperliquid trading app. MAS describes the list as a consumer protection measure for entities that may be wrongly perceived as licensed or regulated by MAS. Coverage we found does not quote MAS giving a specific reason for this entry.
Hyperliquid responded on X the same day, saying the listing is not a ban, an enforcement action or a finding of wrongdoing. According to Cointelegraph, it also said it has never claimed to be licensed or authorised by MAS, and that nothing about its permissionless infrastructure has changed. BrokerChooser reports it said it is committed to engaging with regulators.
The listing did not come alone. Cointelegraph reports MAS added Bybit on 17 June, and KuCoin and Bitget were already on the list. In May 2025, MAS told crypto firms serving overseas clients from Singapore to get licensed or stop operating, according to BrokerChooser. The coverage we found does not link that directive to Hyperliquid.
What the listing does and does not mean
It is not a prohibition. Hyperliquid and MAS both say the listing is not a ban. We found no indication that access was restricted or that anyone is barred from using the platform because of it.
It is not a licensing theory. The coverage we found does not explain why MAS considers a decentralized protocol within its perimeter, or who the responsible party would be. That is the open question.
It may not be a first for DeFi. We could not confirm whether Hyperliquid is the first decentralized exchange on the list, and one commentary piece describes it only as "one of the first major DeFi protocols flagged". The other recent listings we found, Bybit, KuCoin and Bitget, are centralized exchanges.
The wider effect is our reading, not a finding. One commentary, from Coinsdo, argues the listing is a published fact that banking partners can see and auditors will find, so a venue can be fully compliant and still become costlier for a bank to work with. We treat that as one analyst's argument. We did not find evidence of banks or prime brokers adding Hyperliquid to restricted lists.
Why it matters
The signal is a gap between a published warning and any stated rule. The listing is public, simple to cite and hard to ignore in a due diligence file, yet it does not say what firms should do about it. For anyone whose treasury, hedging or liquidity work touches decentralized derivatives, the useful reading is that the venue now carries a documented regulatory flag that someone may ask about, not that use is prohibited.
Hyperliquid is not small. BrokerChooser, citing CoinGecko, ranks it the ninth-largest decentralized exchange by trading volume and cites about $5.7 billion in total value locked, per DefiLlama, as of the time of the listing. That is why compliance teams are paying attention.
For Philippine readers, we found no equivalent alert from the BSP or the Philippine SEC, and no follow-on action from MAS since June. Our reading is that firms with Singapore banking relationships or Singapore holding structures are the most likely to feel it first. That is a judgement, not something we found documented.
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