Hyperliquid (HYPE) in Talks With Kraken Parent Payward to Enter US via Bitnomial

Talks With Kraken's Parent

Hyperliquid (HYPE) is in advanced talks to bring its perpetual futures to United States traders through Bitnomial, a U.S.-regulated digital asset exchange and clearinghouse owned by Payward, the parent company of Kraken, according to people familiar with the matter. The discussions, reported Monday, would give American customers access to a subset of Hyperliquid's perpetual futures and would mark the first U.S. push by Singapore-based Hyperliquid Labs, whose decentralized platform has been off-limits to American customers. It could also offer a template for how other offshore, unregistered venues might enter the country, reshaping the wider altcoin derivatives landscape.

Any agreement would still require regulatory sign-off. Payward has already presented the Commodity Futures Trading Commission with a proposal outlining the basic structure of the arrangement, while monetary terms remain undisclosed. Representatives for Payward and Hyperliquid Labs declined to comment.

The deal logic rests on a structural problem: as a decentralized venue handling more than $4 billion in daily trading volume, Hyperliquid has no central operator, and its permissionless design lets anyone with access trade — a setup regulators worry leaves such platforms exposed to manipulation, money laundering or sanctions evasion. Routing access through Bitnomial's regulated infrastructure would supply the operator and oversight a compliant U.S. framework requires. The talks also follow President Donald Trump's Aug. 19 remarks at a White House meeting with crypto and financial industry executives, where he said CFTC Chairman Michael Selig was working to bring the platform onshore in a fully compliant and legal fashion — comments that sent HYPE sharply higher. For context on the venue at the center of the story, our Hyperliquid ecosystem hub tracks the platform's expansion.

A 10-to-12-Month Timeline

Ashley Ebersole, a former senior counsel at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, estimates that a U.S. pathway for Hyperliquid could take 10 to 12 months even if both agencies actively pursue it — and the process would demand more than a single registration. U.S. law currently provides no straightforward route for offering crypto perpetual futures to American retail customers in the form they trade offshore, so regulators would first have to identify their statutory authority and then build rules around it. The CFTC would likely hold primary jurisdiction over perpetual contracts tied to commodities, while securities-linked contracts could fall under the SEC as security-based swaps, echoing the Dodd-Frank split between the two agencies. A compliant structure could span the trading venue, clearing and intermediaries, potentially including designated contract market and derivatives clearing organization infrastructure.

A faster route is possible if regulators lean heavily on existing authorities or exemptive relief — potentially within six months — but the 2024 Supreme Court decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo ended Chevron deference, meaning an agency cannot establish statutory jurisdiction simply by interpreting ambiguity in its own favor. Congressional legislation such as the pending Digital Asset Market Clarity Act would provide more legal certainty, yet could take considerably longer and may never pass.

Pressure for tailored rules is already building. In July, the Hyperliquid Policy Center and Phantom asked the CFTC to write rules designed for onchain markets, arguing that decentralized software developers and non-custodial wallet providers should not automatically face the same registration obligations as traditional financial firms. On Aug. 24, the Policy Center proposed treating qualifying equity perpetuals as security futures, noting that HIP-3 markets had processed more than $480 billion in cumulative notional volume in their first 10 months — an onchain-first push that now extends into the protocol's HIP-4 prediction markets. American traders meanwhile have limited alternatives: Kalshi filed with the CFTC in June to list perpetual futures linked to HYPE, and Coinbase added more than 290 Hyperliquid-powered perpetual markets to its Base App on Aug. 19 with leverage up to 50x — where outsized positions can face steep slippage — yet U.S., U.K. and Canadian users were excluded. Readers in supported regions can follow our guide on how to trade on Hyperliquid for practical access steps. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on MEXC.

A Door Not Limited to One Venue

Both developments point to the same arc: the United States is shifting from freezing out offshore perpetuals to designing an on-ramp for them, and Hyperliquid is the test case. The authoritative anchor is the proposal Payward itself presented to the CFTC — it confirms the basic structure of a Bitnomial-routed arrangement, while leaving monetary terms, a timetable and the exact list of supported contracts undisclosed. As Ebersole frames it, any framework regulators build cannot realistically be Hyperliquid-specific, giving Coinbase, Kraken and other registered platforms grounds to pursue comparable products, with HYPE functioning as the venue's governance token. COINOTAG's read: the CFTC's response to that filing, not the headlines, will set the pace.