Payward plans U.S. launch of Hyperliquid-based perpetual futures through Bitnomial

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Payward Hyperliquid U.S. futures

Highlights

Payward, Kraken's parent, plans to offer U.S. clients perpetual futures on Hyperliquid’s blockchain via Bitnomial Exchange, pending CFTC regulatory approval.
Clients will require futures accounts with both NinjaTrader Clearing and Bitnomial, enabling U.S. regulatory supervision without exposing Hyperliquid's current order books to domestic users.
Global perpetual futures trading exceeds $85 trillion in 2025, with Hyperliquid settling about 9% of open positions, though its project revenue fell 43% to $202 million in Q2 2026.

Proposed market structure and approval path

As first reported by CoinDesk, Payward, the parent company of Kraken, says it plans to offer U.S. clients access to perpetual futures on Hyperliquid’s public blockchain. The company says it will begin with Hyperliquid HIP-3 markets, which let third parties deploy and administer their own permissioned perpetual futures venues.

Subject to regulatory approval, the contracts would be listed under the rules of Bitnomial Exchange, Payward’s designated contract market, which is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. If approved, U.S. clients would trade newly created Payward contracts on the blockchain rather than gaining access to Hyperliquid’s existing perpetual markets.

Clients would need futures accounts with Payward’s broker, NinjaTrader Clearing, and with Bitnomial, with approval required from both NinjaTrader Clearing and Bitnomial. The structure is designed to connect offshore-style derivatives infrastructure with U.S. regulatory supervision without directly opening current Hyperliquid order books to domestic users.

Potential impact for Hyperliquid and the wider sector

Perpetual futures have largely traded outside U.S. regulated markets since debuting in 2016. In 2025 alone, more than $85 trillion changes hands worldwide, according to CoinGecko’s 2026 State of Crypto Perpetuals Report, while Hyperliquid’s decentralized exchange settles roughly 9% of all open perpetual positions globally.

For Hyperliquid, the proposed deployment could bring a CFTC-regulated operator and a new source of U.S.-linked activity to its chain. It could also provide a financial lift for the project after revenue falls 43% in third-quarter 2025 to about $202 million in second-quarter 2026, according to DefiLlama data.

Hyperliquid is contacted for comment but has not responded by publication time. The companies also do not disclose how revenue from the new markets would be split.

Our earlier coverage of the U.S. Senate’s failed vote on the Clarity Act described how the split effectively stalled a proposed federal market-structure framework for digital assets. We noted that the setback left crypto firms still looking to regulators for clarity, while debates over stablecoin rules and political ethics continued to complicate bipartisan agreement in Washington.

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