Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, said on Wednesday it plans to let US clients trade perpetual futures settled on Hyperliquid’s public blockchain, using Payward’s own CFTC-regulated infrastructure to do it legally onshore. More than $85 trillion changed hands in perpetual futures trading globally in 2025, and Hyperliquid’s decentralised exchange alone now settles roughly 9% of all open positions worldwide, almost none of it accessible to US traders under current rules.
The structure routes around that gap rather than through Hyperliquid directly. Bitnomial, a CFTC-regulated clearinghouse Payward owns, would clear new Payward-created contracts referencing Hyperliquid markets, while clients trade through futures accounts held with Payward’s broker and with NinjaTrader Clearing, also under the Payward umbrella. Both Bitnomial and Payward’s broker would need to approve each client before they could trade.
None of it is approved yet. Payward has presented the structure to the CFTC, but formal sign-off has not been granted, and Ashley Ebersole, a former SEC enforcement counsel, has estimated the review could take ten to twelve months. HYPE, Hyperliquid’s token, still jumped more than 4% on the announcement, extending a rebound already under way.
The pitch is that this is the compliant path the White House has said it wants for onshore crypto derivatives, built entirely from licenses Payward already holds rather than a new one written for the occasion. Whether the CFTC treats a decentralised exchange’s order book as an acceptable reference price for a regulated US contract is the actual question underneath the announcement, and Wednesday’s statement answered none of it.
