President Trump says his administration wants to bring the decentralized exchange Hyperliquid into the United States, a month after he said the CFTC would work toward that goal. Kraken's parent company Payward is now working with the CFTC and CFTC-regulated platform Bitnomial to offer registered U.S. users perpetual futures tied to Hyperliquid markets, though analysts say writing the necessary rules could take up to a year.
President Donald Trump says his administration is working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States "in a fully compliant and legal fashion," he said — but the decentralized exchange likely won't open its existing venue directly to American traders. Instead, the path runs through a regulated intermediary built on top of it.
A regulated side door
Last month, Trump said the Commodity Futures Trading Commission would work to bring Hyperliquid into the U.S. Soon after, Kraken's parent company Payward said it was working with the CFTC to offer registered U.S. users a selection of crypto perpetual futures linked to Hyperliquid markets through Bitnomial, a CFTC-regulated platform.
That arrangement could let Hyperliquid provide pieces of its underlying technology, liquidity, or market design without opening its existing venue to U.S. traders, according to Nansen Research analyst Nicolai Sondergaard. He said the result would be a separate U.S. product built around Hyperliquid's infrastructure, with the final structure not yet formally announced. Sondergaard added that U.S. users would probably get fewer markets, lower leverage, and more conservative risk controls than users on the permissionless venue.
Two regulators, one rulebook
Both the CFTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission would likely need to write revised interpretive rules covering custody and routing standards, former SEC senior counsel Ashley Ebersole told The Block. But the Bitnomial-Hyperliquid partnership gives Hyperliquid a regulatory head start, he said, potentially saving months or years compared with pursuing U.S. entry alone.
The Hyperliquid Policy Center urged the SEC and CFTC in a letter last month to adopt a harmonized framework for perpetual contracts. In May, the CFTC cleared the way for bitcoin perpetual futures by greenlighting KalshiEX and Coinbase. On Thursday, Coinbase filed a notice registration form with the SEC to list equity perpetuals. Still, Ebersole said, changing rules at the SEC and CFTC is slow, and revisions could take up to a year even if regulators move quickly — a timeline that could run into the 2028 presidential election and a shift in priorities.
Pushback from incumbents
Not everyone welcomes the shift. Mark Hays of Americans for Financial Reform and Demand Progress said the administration's push for platforms like Hyperliquid has a troubled record and risks financial instability. CME CEO Terrence Duffy has repeatedly warned that crypto perpetuals carry serious risk and has sued the CFTC over its approval of the products.
Legacy players want to defend their turf, Ebersole said, pointing to a similar fight in Congress between banks and crypto over stablecoin rewards. He said those incumbents could argue that perpetuals don't comply with the existing rulebook at all — which is why regulators are moving to revise that rulebook to allow products like Hyperliquid's into the U.S.
Source: The Block
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