Payward plans to offer U.S. clients onchain perpetual futures on Hyperliquid
Reported by CoinDesk · AI-assisted summary by ChikoCorp AI News Desk
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Summary
Payward, parent company of Kraken, plans to offer U.S. clients access to perpetual futures on Hyperliquid’s public blockchain, pending regulatory approval. These contracts would be listed under Bitnomial Exchange, a CFTC-regulated designated contract market owned by Payward, with clearing handled by NinjaTrader Clearing. This move aims to bring a popular onchain product into a regulated U.S. framework while keeping trading and recordkeeping on Hyperliquid.
Why it matters
The source highlights this development as significant because perpetual futures have largely traded outside U.S. regulation since 2016, despite massive global volumes exceeding $85 trillion in 2025. Introducing them into a regulated U.S. structure could impact how these derivatives are accessed and supervised domestically. The source does not detail broader market or policy impacts beyond this regulatory integration.
Key context
Perpetual futures allow investors to speculate on digital asset price movements without owning the assets themselves and have no expiry dates, with funding payments exchanged to maintain positions. Hyperliquid’s decentralized exchange currently settles about 9% of all open perpetual contracts worldwide. Payward acquired Bitnomial Exchange in 2025 for $550 million and NinjaTrader Clearing for $1.5 billion the same year, positioning itself for regulated futures offerings. The proposed markets will use Hyperliquid's onchain order book, with Bitnomial acting as the market deployer and clearinghouse, and NinjaTrader managing client accounts.
Key numbers and entities
Key entities include Payward (parent company of Kraken), Hyperliquid (public blockchain decentralized exchange), Bitnomial Exchange (CFTC-regulated designated contract market owned by Payward), and NinjaTrader Clearing (Payward’s registered futures commission merchant). Payward acquired Bitnomial for $550 million and NinjaTrader Clearing for $1.5 billion in 2025. The report cites $85 trillion in global perpetual futures volume in 2025 per CoinGecko's 2026 report. Hyperliquid’s revenue dropped 43% to about $202 million from Q3 2025 to Q2 2026 according to DefiLlama data.
What remains unclear
The source does not provide a launch date, fee structure, targeted trading volumes, or details of any financial arrangement between Payward and Hyperliquid. It also remains unspecified whether existing Hyperliquid perpetual markets will become available to U.S. clients. Hyperliquid had not responded to requests for comment by publication time.