NextFin News - Hyperliquid Labs, the Singapore-based operator of the world's dominant onchain perpetual futures venue, is in advanced talks to bring its contracts to US traders through Kraken's parent company Payward, according to people familiar with the matter. The proposed structure would route US order flow through Payward's Bitnomial exchange, the first platform to win US regulator approval for perpetual futures, in a move that would end one of crypto's most profitable regulatory arbitrage trades — if it clears Washington.
The talks come weeks after President Donald Trump said at a White House event that Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairman Michael Selig was working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States "in a fully compliant and legal fashion." The timing matters: Hyperliquid has spent 2026 building the very products — perpetuals on equities, commodities, indexes, and pre-IPO names — that US regulators have historically kept offshore, and Payward has spent the same period assembling the licenses to host them.
Representatives of Payward and Hyperliquid Labs declined to comment. The people asked not to be identified because they are not authorized to discuss the matter, and the discussions could still fail to produce a deal or regulatory sign-off.
The Deal Structure: A Regulatory Key, Not a Merger
What is being discussed is not an acquisition of Hyperliquid Labs. It is narrower and, in some ways, more consequential: US-based traders would use Payward's Bitnomial exchange to trade some perpetual futures tied to the price of crypto tokens built on Hyperliquid's blockchain technology. In effect, Hyperliquid supplies the trading technology and the liquidity surface; Bitnomial supplies the regulated wrapper — the designated contract market, the derivatives clearing organization, and the futures commission merchant registration that US law requires.
That division of labor is the entire point. Hyperliquid operates outside the United States and is not officially open to American traders. For years that geoblock was a constraint; in 2026 it became a strategy, as the platform grew into the reference venue for onchain order-book trading while US competitors waited for regulators to move. The CFTC moved in late May 2026, approving the first perpetual futures contract for listing on a US-regulated exchange — a cash-settled perpetual referencing the spot price of Bitcoin — and confirming that perpetuals can fit within the existing Commodity Exchange Act framework when appropriately structured. Bitnomial's own rule self-certification, filed May 29, was deemed certified on June 12, 2026.
Payward was already positioned for exactly this moment. It completed its acquisition of Bitnomial on May 1, 2026, paying up to $550 million in cash and stock in a transaction that valued Payward's equity at $20 billion. The deal gave Kraken's parent what it describes as the only fully CFTC-licensed crypto-native derivatives stack in the US — a designated contract market, a derivatives clearing organization, and an FCM held together — plus a Federal Reserve limited-purpose master account and a US bank charter recognized under both federal and state law. By Payward's own count, it now holds more than 100 active licenses across 30 countries.
For Hyperliquid, the attraction is equally plain. US traders represent the deepest pool of risk capital in the world, and they have been legally excluded from the platform's fastest-growing products. A compliant onramp would open that capital without forcing Hyperliquid Labs itself to become a US-registered exchange — at least not immediately.
Why Hyperliquid, and Why Now
The platform's scale in 2026 is what makes the talks worth having at all. Hyperliquid has processed more than $4 trillion in cumulative volume, according to 21Shares research, and handles roughly $8 billion to $12 billion in daily perpetual volume. Open interest across its products reached $11 billion in August 2026, the highest level of the year, after its real-world-asset perpetuals hit a record $3.6 billion on August 28 — more than a third of total platform open interest and, by the platform's own accounting, larger than its Bitcoin perpetuals book.
That shift is the real story beneath the headline. Hyperliquid is no longer just a crypto-derivatives venue. Through its HIP-3 builder-deployed market framework, it has become a 24/7 marketplace for equity-linked, commodity, index, and synthetic pre-IPO contracts — roughly $4 billion of open interest across those non-crypto categories, including more than $250 million tied to SpaceX ahead of its expected public listing. Perpetual futures, the contract form that US regulators spent a decade keeping at arm's length, have become the default wrapper for trading almost anything.
The token market has noticed. HYPE, the platform's native asset, reached an all-time high of $86.71 on August 27, 2026, according to DeFiLlama, putting its market capitalization above $18 billion and ranking it among the top ten cryptoassets. As of August 31 the token was changing hands near $81.60, up more than 43% over the past week, with a market capitalization of about $18.16 billion, according to CoinGecko. That rally has a mechanical driver as well: on August 26 the platform launched its AQAv2 reserve yield program, which channels 90% of yield from $6.74 billion in USDC deposits into HYPE buybacks — a direct link between trading activity and token demand.
"Hyperliquid has been the poster child for convergence: the idea that traditional asset classes are going to be traded, margined and settled 24/7 on crypto rails," said Joshua Lim, global co-head of markets at FalconX. "It's exhilarating to see the administration and regulators acknowledge them as a market structure innovator and opening up access to US market participants."
And the political door is open. When Trump made his remarks on August 20, the market reaction was immediate and cross-asset: shares of Hyperliquid Strategies, the publicly traded digital-asset treasury company that accumulates HYPE and trades under the ticker PURR, jumped as much as 31% on August 19. Mainstream US exchange operators fell to session lows — Cboe Global Markets declined as much as 6.1%, and CME Group fell as much as 3.4%.
The Cyclical Leg and the Structural Leg
It is important to separate what is cyclical from what is structural here, because the two point in different directions.
The cyclical leg is the token rally and the open-interest expansion. HYPE launched via airdrop on November 29, 2024, initially valued above $3 and briefly touching $7 within its first day; from that opening level the token is up more than tenfold, funding rates have run hot, and a 9.92-million-token unlock worth roughly $809 million at current prices — 1% of total supply — is scheduled for September 6 for core contributors. Speculative positioning of this kind mean-reverts. When funding turns negative, when unlocks overhang the market, when the RWA-perp fad cools, the token multiple compresses. That is a cycle, and it will revert on its own.
The structural leg is the regulatory moat. What Payward owns — the DCM, the DCO, the FCM, the bank charter, the Fed master account — took years and hundreds of millions of dollars to assemble, and it cannot be replicated by a new entrant on a venture timeline. The CFTC's May decision to evaluate perpetual products case-by-case, rather than through a single blanket rule, means each new contract is a gate that only a licensed venue can pass. That is a regime shift, not a cycle: the offshore gray market for perps is being closed by rule change, and the capital that once sat offshore will either come onshore through licensed venues or remain excluded.
The Hyperliquid–Payward talks sit at the intersection of those two forces. The token price is pricing the cyclical leg — the hope of US access, the buyback program, the momentum. The deal's actual value, if it closes, is the structural leg: a durable distribution channel into the US that survives the next funding-rate reset.
The Second-Order Trade Nobody Is Making
The first-order read of this story is obvious: Hyperliquid wins, US traders win, and the offshore venues lose. The second-order read is more interesting, and the market has not priced it.
If Hyperliquid's contracts land on Bitnomial, the immediate beneficiaries are not only Hyperliquid and Payward. They are also the incumbents the token rally punished — CME Group and Cboe. Here is the mechanism: regulated perpetuals legitimize the contract form for the entire US institutional base. Pension funds, family offices, and registered advisors who could never touch an offshore perp can hold a CFTC-cleared one. That expands the total addressable market for perps far beyond the crypto-native crowd that built Hyperliquid. CME and Cboe have already launched long-dated "perpetual-style" futures to compete; a regulated perp complex gives those products a deeper, cheaper hedging market and pulls traditional flow onto their rails.
Conversely, the biggest loser may be Hyperliquid's own decentralization premium. The features that made the platform dominant offshore — non-custodial order books, high leverage, permissionless market deployment, minimal identity checks — are exactly the features US regulation is most likely to strip out. A Bitnomial-listed Hyperliquid perp would run with know-your-customer checks, position limits, leverage caps, and cleared margin. The product US traders receive may be a compliance-safe shadow of the offshore original. If the edge was the lack of rules, the onshore product has no edge — only distribution.
That is why the strongest competitor in this story may be neither Payward nor CME. It is Kalshi, the prediction-market operator that also won CFTC approval for regulated perpetuals and has filed to list HYPE perpetual futures. Kalshi has no legacy exchange model to protect and no offshore business to cannibalize. If the value of onshoring is simply "a regulated venue for perp-like products," Kalshi is the purest play.
"Trump's comments on Hyperliquid and the immediate reaction in HYPE are another indication of how quickly the regulatory and political backdrop for digital assets is shifting," said Ayesha Kiani, chief operating officer at Monarq Asset Management. "What's notable isn't just the price move but also that decentralised market infrastructure is increasingly entering mainstream policy conversations."
The Counter-Thesis: Why This Deal Could Fail, or Fail to Matter
The strongest argument against the bullish read is simple: the talks may not close. "Advanced talks" in crypto have a poor completion rate, and both parties declined to comment — a telling silence when a deal is genuinely near. Regulatory sign-off is a separate gate after the commercial deal, and the CFTC has said it will evaluate perpetual products case-by-case. A Hyperliquid-built contract on Bitnomial would be among the first non-Bitcoin perpetuals through that gate, and the first tied to a platform whose core technology sits outside US jurisdiction.
Even if the deal closes, the product may not be the product. If US perps launch with leverage caps below 5x, mandatory clearing that eliminates the funding-rate arbitrage, or KYC requirements that drive the most active offshore traders away, the onshore venue captures the compliant fringe while the core flow stays offshore or migrates to Kalshi. In that scenario, Hyperliquid gains a US storefront but loses the structural advantage that made it worth acquiring access to.
The falsifying signal is specific and observable: if the CFTC rejects, or indefinitely delays, a Bitnomial Rule 40.6 self-certification covering Hyperliquid-built perpetual contracts — or if the approved US product launches with leverage caps below 5x and cleared margin that removes the funding-rate mechanism — then the "regulated Hyperliquid" thesis is broken, and the token's US-access premium should unwind.
What to Watch
Three things decide whether this story becomes a deal or a footnote. First, a joint announcement or filing from Payward and Hyperliquid Labs — until then, these remain talks. Second, a Bitnomial CFTC Rule 40.6 self-certification specifically covering the Hyperliquid perp contracts, which would move the proposal from commercial discussion to regulatory reality. Third, the September 6 HYPE unlock of 9.92 million tokens, roughly $809 million at current prices, which will test whether the token's rally is supported by buyback-driven demand or by speculative positioning alone.
Three time horizons frame what comes next. In the short term, the unlock will test whether buyback-driven demand from the AQAv2 program — which channels 90% of yield from $6.74 billion in USDC deposits into HYPE repurchases — can absorb a 1%-of-supply supply overhang, or whether the rally was speculative positioning that mean-reverts. In the medium term, everything turns on the CFTC's case-by-case gate: a Bitnomial self-certification covering Hyperliquid-built contracts would move this from commercial discussion to regulatory reality, while a rejection or indefinite delay would break the thesis and unwind the token's US-access premium. In the long term, the direction is structural regardless of this specific deal: the offshore gray market for perpetuals is being closed by rule change, and the licensed venues are the durable beneficiaries.
Three scenarios map the range. The base case: a deal closes with regulatory sign-off, but the US product launches with leverage caps and cleared margin that strip out the funding-rate arbitrage — Hyperliquid gains distribution, not its full edge. The upside case: the CFTC blesses the structure broadly, US capital floods the onchain order book, and Payward's $550 million Bitnomial purchase becomes the key that unlocked the deepest risk pool in the world. The downside case: the talks fail, or the approved product is so constrained that traders stay offshore, leaving HYPE's multiple to deflate on the unlock.
Beyond the deal itself, watch the incumbents' response. CME and Cboe have both built perp-adjacent products; a credible onshore Hyperliquid launch would force them to either cut fees or differentiate on asset coverage. And watch Kalshi: it is the only competitor that benefits whether Hyperliquid onshores or stays offshore, because it is the only one playing the same regulatory game without a legacy model to defend.
The central judgment: this is a structural regime shift in market access overlaid with a cyclical token rally, and the two should not be confused. The deal, if it closes, gives Hyperliquid a durable US distribution channel and gives Payward the marquee product its $550 million Bitnomial purchase was bought to host. But the token's current multiple is pricing the hope of access, not the mechanics of it. When the CFTC's case-by-case gate opens — or doesn't — the structural winners will be the licensed venues; the cyclical winners will be whoever exits before the unlock.
Hyperliquid spent 2026 proving that perpetual futures could wrap the entire market, not just crypto. The question now is whether the version that fits inside US law is still worth trading.
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