Payward plans to offer U.S. clients onchain perpetual futures on Hyperliquid
Leveraging its $550 million acquisition of Bitnomial, Payward aims to become the first registered U.S. exchange to deploy markets on the Hyperliquid protocol.
Payward plans to offer clients in the U.S. access to onchain perpetual futures markets, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken announced Wednesday.
The company said it will start with Hyperliquid HIP-3 markets, which allow third parties to deploy and administer their own permissioned perpetual futures markets. 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, the proposal would allow U.S. clients to trade new Payward-created contracts on Hyperliquid’s public blockchain. Clients would need futures accounts with Payward’s broker, NinjaTrader Clearing, and Bitnomial and approved by both NinjaTrader Clearing and Bitnomial.
Perpetual futures have largely traded outside U.S. regulated markets since their debut in 2016. In 2025 alone, more than $85 trillion changed hands worldwide, according to CoinGecko’s 2026 State of Crypto Perpetuals Report. Hyperliquid's decentralized exchange (DEX) settles roughly 9% of all open perp positions worldwide. The deal could also provide a financial boost for the project, whose revenue fell 43% in third-quarter 2025 to about $202 million in second-quarter 2026, according to DefiLlama data.
The central point of the deal is Payward is trying to bring a popular offshore and onchain trading product into a regulated U.S. structure while keeping trade matching and recordkeeping on Hyperliquid.
"A U.S. client would open a futures account with Payward’s registered broker and trade new perpetual futures contracts on Hyperliquid, cleared through the same clearinghouse that already supports the crypto perpetual contracts Payward offers U.S. clients today," said Jon Pham, head of U.S. derivatives.
Perpetuals are derivative products that allow investors to place positions on the price movements of an underlying digital asset without owning the asset itself. Unlike traditional futures contracts, perps do not expire and can be maintained indefinitely. Traders make or receive periodic funding payments to keep their positions open.
The markets will run on Hyperliquid's public blockchain, whose onchain order book matches and records trades. Bitnomial Exchange and Bitnomial Clearinghouse would act as the HIP-3 deployer, creating, owning and administering the market and clearing and settling the contracts. NinjaTrader Clearing, Payward’s registered futures commission merchant, would carry client accounts.
Payward did not disclose a fee schedule, expected trading volumes, details of any economic arrangement with Hyperliquid or a planned launch date. A Kraken spokesperson said it could not speculate on the potential revenue this would bring to the company, and did not address questions about expected trading volumes.
Hyperliquid was contacted for comment, but had not responded by publication time.
For Hyperliquid, the proposed deployment could add a CFTC-regulated operator and a new source of U.S.-linked activity to its chain. It does not mean that its existing perpetual markets become available to U.S. customers, and the companies did not disclose how any revenue from the new markets would be divided.
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This move represents a structural test of how onchain derivatives can integrate with U.S. regulated frameworks. By routing Hyperliquid trades through CFTC-regulated Bitnomial and NinjaTrader Clearing, Payward is attempting to thread a regulatory needle: keeping order matching and settlement onchain while wrapping client accounts in traditional derivatives infrastructure. Success would validate a hybrid model where decentralized execution coexists with centralized custody and clearing—addressing the core regulatory friction that has kept $85 trillion in annual perpetuals volume offshore.
The timing signals shifting CFTC appetite post-2024 crypto framework developments. Hyperliquid's 9% share of global perpetual open interest makes it a material target for U.S. regulatory legitimacy. However, the undisclosed revenue split, fee structure, and launch timeline leave critical unknowns: whether the regulatory overhead will compress margins enough to compete with unregulated alternatives, and whether U.S. demand justifies the compliance complexity. Payward's $2+ billion in M&A spending on derivatives infrastructure (Bitnomial + NinjaTrader Clearing) now has a concrete use case beyond Kraken's existing offerings.
For Hyperliquid specifically, this adds institutional legitimacy and U.S.-regulated order flow without forcing the protocol itself into regulatory scope—a favorable outcome. Yet Hyperliquid's revenue declined 43% quarter-over-quarter, suggesting fee pressure and market saturation in its core offshore markets. A regulated U.S. offering could stabilize fee-per-trade but will likely attract lower-leverage, lower-velocity traders than its current user base.