Hyperliquid Labs and Payward, the parent company of Kraken, are in advanced talks to bring Hyperliquid's perpetual futures market to U.S. traders through Bitnomial, Payward's regulated exchange and clearinghouse. The discussions were confirmed by people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly. Any deal requires regulatory approval before it can go live.
Bitnomial holds a Designated Contract Market license from the CFTC, which means futures and derivatives cleared through it operate inside a federal regulatory perimeter. Routing Hyperliquid's perps through that infrastructure would give U.S. retail and institutional traders access to the protocol's order book without the protocol itself needing to register directly with U.S. regulators as a foreign board of trade.
President Trump said publicly in recent weeks that his administration is working to bring Hyperliquid into the U.S. market. That statement—unusual in its specificity toward a single DeFi protocol—accelerated attention on what a legal on-ramp for Hyperliquid's perps desk would look like.
HYPE, Hyperliquid's native token, rose five percent to fresh all-time highs on Monday as the talks became public. The token launched via airdrop on Nov. 29, 2024, and has grown into one of the larger crypto assets by market cap.
Hyperliquid is a purpose-built Layer 1 blockchain running its own Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus, designed from the ground up to settle perpetual futures on-chain at low latency. Its order book is fully on-chain—not a hybrid model with off-chain matching—which sets it apart from most centralized perps venues and creates a distinct compliance question for U.S. regulators accustomed to evaluating intermediaries, not protocols.
The platform's perps market has drawn sustained volume that rivals or exceeds several centralized exchanges without accepting U.S. users. That geographic restriction is the direct barrier this deal is structured to solve. By partnering with a CFTC-regulated entity like Bitnomial rather than applying for its own license, Hyperliquid Labs takes the faster path—regulatory review of the partnership arrangement rather than a full registration process for the protocol itself.
Payward's interest in the deal reflects Kraken's broader push into derivatives. Kraken acquired Bitnomial's exchange business to establish a regulated U.S. derivatives footprint. Absorbing Hyperliquid's liquidity depth and order flow would give that derivatives infrastructure immediate scale rather than building volume from a standing start.
The open question is regulatory sign-off. CFTC oversight of crypto derivatives has grown more defined under the current administration, but on-chain perpetual futures—where settlement happens directly on a blockchain without a traditional custodian intermediary—still sit in contested territory. How Bitnomial structures the legal wrapper around Hyperliquid's on-chain positions will determine whether the CFTC views this as a cleared swap, a retail commodity transaction, or something requiring new guidance.
Hyperliquid's absence from the U.S. market has not stopped it from becoming one of the most liquid on-chain perps venues globally. Opening access to U.S. traders through a regulated pipe changes the addressable pool of capital the protocol can attract. The U.S. accounts for a substantial share of global derivatives trading volume across both traditional and crypto markets, and Hyperliquid has operated entirely outside that base.
No closing date for the deal has been disclosed. The talks remain in progress and no definitive agreement has been announced by either Hyperliquid Labs or Payward.
