FinTelegram has published its DeFi Compliance Perimeter as an evergreen framework for reviewing DeFi brokers, investment schemes, and supporting rails. The goal is simple: to define the new compliance perimeter before the next retail-investor damage cycle scales.
ESMA has now said the quiet part out loud: many derivatives marketed as crypto perpetuals are likely CFDs in the EU. For Hyperliquid and front ends like AXIOM, that raises major questions around leverage, retail targeting, appropriateness, and investor protection.
A February 2026 compliance review confirms that offshore brokers PU Prime, Vantage Markets, and RoboForex continue onboarding EU retail clients and processing card deposits despite repeated regulatory warnings across the EU. Technical analysis of the payment flows identifies Cyprus-supervised payment infrastructure facilitating these transactions, raising supervisory questions under PSD2 and AMLD frameworks.
Keep your token in MiCA and route derivatives liquidity to venues that shoulder MiFID II obligations. Our Hyperliquid tests show why the split matters: EU access to perps without KYC is a venue risk, not a loophole for issuers.
Perpetual futures (perps) on DEXs may be branded as “permissionless,” but in the EU they don’t live outside the law. When derivatives are offered to EU clients, they generally fall under MiFID II—licences, conduct rules, surveillance, the lot [2]. In our latest field test from Italy, we connected a wallet to Hyperliquid, accepted its terms, and reached Spot and Perps—with no EU geo-gate, no residency question, and no KYC.