Payward intends to grant users located in the United States access to onchain perpetual futures markets, as stated Wednesday by the parent entity of digital asset platform Kraken.
The business explained that it will begin with Hyperliquid HIP-3 markets, which give third parties the ability to establish and manage their own authorized perpetual futures trading environments. Pending regulatory clearance, these contracts would trade pursuant to the guidelines of Bitnomial Exchange, which functions as Payward’s designated contract market overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Should authorization be granted, the initiative would enable U.S. participants to trade novel contracts formulated by Payward directly on the public Hyperliquid blockchain. Participants would be required to maintain futures accounts through NinjaTrader Clearing and Bitnomial, the brokers associated with Payward, following approval from both entities.
Perpetual futures have traditionally functioned outside regulated American markets since their inception back in 2016. Throughout 2025 alone, global trading volume surpassed $85 trillion, according to the 2026 State of Crypto Perpetuals Report published by CoinGecko. The decentralized exchange platform Hyperliquid processes approximately 9% of all active perpetual positions across the globe. Furthermore, this arrangement could deliver a financial lift to the protocol, whose revenue dropped by 43% during the third quarter of 2025, reaching roughly $202 million by the second quarter of 2026 based on information from DefiLlama.
The primary objective of this agreement is for Payward to bridge a well-liked offshore and onchain financial instrument into a compliant U.S. framework, while keeping trade execution and data logging on Hyperliquid.
Jon Pham, who serves as the head of U.S. derivatives, remarked that a domestic client would open a futures account utilizing Payward’s licensed broker to trade fresh perpetual contracts on Hyperliquid, with clearing handled through the identical clearinghouse currently backing the crypto perpetual instruments that Payward currently supplies to American users.
Payward purchased Bitnomial during May for a sum of $550 million. Additionally, the organization acquired NinjaTrader Clearing for $1.5 billion back in 2025.
Perpetuals represent derivative instruments enabling speculators to take positions regarding price fluctuations of an underlying cryptocurrency without actually possessing the asset. Unlike classic futures agreements, perps never expire and can be maintained indefinitely. Traders exchange recurring funding fees to sustain their active positions.
These markets will operate via the public blockchain of Hyperliquid, where the onchain order book pairs and records transactions. Bitnomial Exchange along with Bitnomial Clearinghouse are set to function as the HIP-3 deployer, initiating, owning, and overseeing the market while also clearing and settling the contracts. NinjaTrader Clearing, which is Payward’s registered futures commission merchant, will manage the participant accounts.
Payward refrained from releasing fee structures, anticipated trading volumes, specifics regarding financial arrangements with Hyperliquid, or an intended rollout schedule. A representative for Kraken noted that the firm could not speculate concerning potential revenue generation from this endeavor and did not respond to inquiries regarding expected trading turnover.
Hyperliquid was reached for commentary, though no reply was provided prior to publication.
For Hyperliquid, the suggested integration could introduce an operator registered with the CFTC alongside a fresh stream of activity tied to the United States onto its network. However, this does not imply that its legacy perpetual markets will become accessible to American clientele, and the organizations did not specify how profits generated from these new markets would be split.
Originally published at https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/09/16/payward-plans-to-offer-u-s-clients-onchain-perpetual-futures-on-hyperliquid.
