Hyperliquid, the decentralized perpetuals exchange that processes more than 4 billion USD in daily trading volume without a central operator, is in advanced talks to bring its products to United States traders through a surprising partner: the parent company of rival exchange Kraken.
According to a Bloomberg report published Monday and attributed to people familiar with the matter, Hyperliquid Labs is negotiating with Payward, Kraken’s parent company, to route American customer access to a subset of its crypto-linked perpetual futures through Bitnomial, a United States-regulated digital asset exchange and clearinghouse owned by Payward. Representatives for both Payward and Hyperliquid Labs declined to comment on the discussions.
Why the deal matters
A completed agreement would mark the first push into the US market by the Singapore-based platform, whose high-speed on-chain trading venue has been technically off-limits to American customers since its rise to prominence. But the significance extends well beyond a single venue’s expansion. The structure under discussion could become a template for how other offshore, unregistered derivatives platforms gain lawful entry into the world’s largest capital market.
The core obstacle for Hyperliquid has always been structural rather than commercial. As a fully decentralized platform with no central operator and a permissionless design that lets anyone with access trade, it embodies exactly the architecture that US regulators have long worried could expose markets to manipulation, wash trading, and other abusive practices. Traditional enforcement answers — licensing an operator, auditing a company, punishing a compliance department — simply do not map onto a protocol.
Routing access through Bitnomial’s regulated rails would supply the missing ingredients: a registered intermediary, a clearinghouse subject to oversight, and an entity that regulators can hold accountable. In effect, the decentralized venue would plug into a compliance wrapper rather than rewrite its own architecture.
Regulators already briefed
The talks are further along than a casual exploration. Bloomberg reported that Payward has already presented the Commodity Futures Trading Commission with a proposal outlining the basic structure of the arrangement. Monetary terms of any potential deal were not known, and any final agreement would still require explicit regulatory sign-off before launch.
The timing fits a broader shift in Washington. The reported discussions follow public remarks from President Donald Trump that his administration was working to bring Hyperliquid onshore, an unusual level of specificity for a sitting president discussing a single trading venue. Meanwhile, both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the CFTC have spent months signaling that they want offshore perpetual futures volume — a market estimated in the tens of billions of dollars daily — pulled back onto regulated US platforms rather than pushed permanently beyond their reach.
Former enforcement officials have argued that the missing piece for onshore perps is precisely this kind of hybrid structure: regulated intermediaries that can offer the product lawfully while decentralized infrastructure supplies the speed and liquidity traders actually want. A Hyperliquid-Bitnomial deal would be the highest-profile test of that thesis to date.
The competitive irony
There is no small irony in the pairing. Kraken and Hyperliquid compete for many of the same derivatives traders, and centralized exchanges have generally viewed decentralized perps venues as a regulatory-arbitrage threat — venues that could offer Americans precisely what licensed platforms could not. Instead of fighting that dynamic, Payward appears to be positioning to capture it, converting a competitive threat into a distribution channel.
For Hyperliquid, the calculus is straightforward. The US represents one of the largest pools of crypto trading capital in the world, and its exclusion from that market has capped growth even as the platform’s daily volumes rival or exceed those of major centralized exchanges. A regulated on-ramp would unlock that demand without forcing the protocol to compromise its core design.
What happens next
Investors and traders should treat the news as directional rather than definitive. Talks of this kind can stall over liability allocation, fee sharing, or the scope of products offered, and CFTC sign-off on a novel structure involving a decentralized venue is not a formality. The initial arrangement, if completed, would likely cover only a subset of Hyperliquid’s perpetuals rather than the full menu available to non-US traders.
Still, the direction of travel is clear. Regulators want onshore oversight, decentralized venues want US liquidity, and regulated intermediaries want relevance in the fastest-growing corner of crypto trading. A deal that satisfies all three would not just open one exchange to one market — it would sketch the blueprint every offshore platform will study.
For now, neither Payward nor Hyperliquid is confirming anything, and the CFTC is not commenting on a pending proposal. But the fact that a decentralized exchange handling more than 4 billion USD a day is negotiating its American debut through a regulated clearinghouse is itself a landmark: the border between decentralized and traditional finance is being negotiated one deal at a time.
hyperliquid doing 4b a day volume and now they need krakens parent to hold their hand into the US lol. makes sense but ironic
rivals is the wrong frame imo. payward owns the regulated US clearinghouse, hyperliquid owns the liquidity. its a treaty not a hand hold
a treaty needs both sides to keep showing up. bitnomial clears it, hyperliquid keeps the order flow, but the cftc still decides whether 4b a day of on-chain perps fits US rules. paper first, template later
ironic how? bitnomial is a us regulated clearinghouse, thats literally the only door into the american perps market right now
if this closes, US traders finally get access to real perps liquidity instead of the watered down cme products
cme bitcoin futures roll monthly, hype perps are perpetual with real depth. if the bitnomial routing keeps funding rates intact its not even close
funding stays intact only if the routing keeps the same shared book. if americans end up in a separate pool the depth argument dies instantly
hyperliquid reaching us traders through krakens parent company was nowhere on my bingo card. rivals partnering because regulation leaves no other door open
^ right? bitnomial is tiny next to 4b daily volume on hype. this is purely a regulatory on-ramp play
its also hyperliquid admitting a permissionless dex cant pass us scrutiny alone. kinda an L for the decentralization pitch if you think about it
or the dex keeps permissionless globally and just gives americans a lawful door. geography was the only thing blocking US users anyway, the tech never changed
Every venue that went mainstream bent somewhere. The permissionless dex still exists globally, americans just get the gated door. Better than the whole thing going gray.
counterpoint, the permissionless version still exists for everyone else. giving US users a lawful door without gutting the main venue is a win if it holds
payward quietly owning both kraken and bitnomial while cooperating with a rival dex is the real story here. empire building
if this lands it becomes the template for every offshore perp venue watching from the sidelines. cftc cleared access to on-chain products is a genuinely big deal
template is exactly the right word. every offshore perp venue with a legal team is watching that cftc proposal right now
payward collecting tolls on both doors, kraken for spot and bitnomial for the perps routing. whoever brokered this at hyperliquid got creative
trump publicly naming one dex for an onshore push was the strangest part of this story. once the white house picks a favorite the cftc clock probably moves faster
4b daily volume routed through bitnomial means the cftc suddenly has on-chain perps data on tap. that alone moves rulemaking faster than any speech