MAS adds Hyperliquid to the "red list": what this means for the DeFi sector
On June 26, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) officially added the website of the decentralized exchange Hyperliquid and the portal of the Hyper Foundation organization to its Investor Alert List. This list includes services that may be mistakenly perceived by users as licensed or regulated financial institutions.
It is important to emphasize: inclusion in this list does not imply a direct ban on operations or the initiation of enforcement measures by the regulator. Representatives of Hyperliquid promptly responded to this event, stating that the platform never claimed a MAS license nor positioned itself as a regulated entity. "Hyperliquid is a public infrastructure. Nothing has changed on the network. As with other open-access blockchains, users self-custody their assets, and transactions are processed transparently," the project team emphasized.
Notably, since the beginning of summer, major centralized exchanges such as KuCoin and Bitget have also been added to a similar list. This indicates a systematic approach by MAS to monitoring the cryptocurrency space.
Context and Implications
This event cannot be viewed in isolation. As early as June 2025, MAS tightened rules for crypto companies, requiring them to obtain a license as a digital token service provider. Otherwise, they must cease servicing foreign clients. The inclusion of Hyperliquid on the "red list" is a logical continuation of this policy, aimed at protecting retail investors from potentially unregulated jurisdictions.
Analyst's comment: In my view, this is a clear signal to the market: even fully decentralized protocols cannot ignore national regulatory requirements. Although there are no legal consequences for the Hyperliquid protocol itself at this point, inclusion in the MAS list may deter institutional investors from the Asia-Pacific region. In the long term, this will only strengthen the trend toward "regulatory arbitrage" — DeFi projects will be forced either to block access from certain countries or to compromise with authorities, which contradicts their original philosophy.