Kraken parent Payward plans onchain perpetuals for US clients on Hyperliquid

Payward, Kraken’s parent company, said it plans to bring perpetual futures markets on Hyperliquid to U.S. clients, in a move that would make it the first U.S.-regulated venue to offer the product. The launch would give American traders access to a market that has largely been out of reach for years.

Two Payward subsidiaries in charge of structure

Payward has stated that the operation will be divided between two of its regulated subsidiaries, and they will be taking responsibility for different parts of the process. Bitnomial, the company’s CFTC-regulated exchange and clearinghouse, would run the HIP-3 markets and handle the clearing and settlement of the contracts. The client accounts will be handled by NinjaTrader Clearing, a CFTC-registered futures commission merchant and NFA member.

Only accounts onboarded through NinjaTrader and approved by both NinjaTrader and Bitnomial would be able to access the markets, according to the press release. Each trade will be matched and recorded on Hyperliquid’s public blockchain via its on-chain order book.

Jon Pham, the company’s head of U.S. derivatives, explained that a U.S. client would open a futures account with Payward’s registered broker and use this account to trade new perpetual futures contracts on Hyperliquid. He added that the same clearinghouse already supports the crypto perpetual contracts Payward currently offers to U.S. clients.

Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 addition helps arrangement

Hyperliquid co-founder Jeffrey Yan announced the newly introduced HIP-3 earlier this month, a feature that gives deployers the option to create permissioned markets using on-chain allowlists, adding access controls while leaving existing markets unchanged.

Payward intends to be the first registered U.S. exchange to offer builder-deployed perpertuals, taking control of the markets while also handling the regulatory obligations.

Traders moved quickly after the announcement, with HYPE, Hyperliquid’s native token, gaining more than 3% within hours. HYPE futures open interest on Binance also saw a 7% increase over the same period.

Perpetual futures have been traded outside the U.S. since 2016, with global trading volume topping $85 trillion in 2025, according to CoinGecko’s 2026 “State of Crypto Perpetuals Report.” Hyperliquid, which launched in 2023, was ranked by CoinGecko as the most active on-chain perpetuals venue that year and has processed more than $200 billion in trading volume over the past 30 days, according to DefiLlama.

Why a US on-chain perps service matters now

On-chain perpetuals have been unavailable to US traders for the better part of a decade. Payward plans to close this gap by creating a compliant route to the market and ensuring competition does not move totally offshore.

As of June 30, 2026, Payward had 6.6 million funded accounts, while an independent third-party accountant’s review of its Proof of Reserves showed that client assets were backed by more than 100%.

If approved by regulators, the contracts would trade under the rules of Bitnomial Exchange LLC. The Hyperliquid protocol is the first Payward plan to bring to U.S. clients, and the company claims additional products are expected to follow.