Payward Plans U.S. Perpetual Futures Market After Global Trading Exceeded $85 Trillion
Key Facts
Payward, the parent company of Kraken, announced on September 16, 2026, its intention to launch on-chain perpetual futures markets for U.S. customers, starting with markets built on Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 protocol. The company said the proposed contracts would be listed under the rules of Bitnomial Exchange if they receive regulatory approval. The announcement sets out a proposed path for trading perpetual contracts on Hyperliquid infrastructure within a regulated U.S. operating framework, but it does not mean trading has begun. Hyperliquid said Payward intends to become the first entity regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to deploy a market on HIP-3. Deployment of the proposed market remains subject to regulatory approval.
According to Payward’s announcement, the markets will operate on the public Hyperliquid chain, while group companies take on the various market and clearing roles. Bitnomial Exchange will create, own and operate the market, and Bitnomial Clearinghouse will handle clearing and settlement. NinjaTrader Clearing, registered with the U.S. agency as a futures commission merchant, will carry customer accounts. Under this arrangement, Hyperliquid remains the on-chain execution layer, while market management, clearing and trader accounts sit with the entities identified in the announcement. Hyperliquid said an access-restriction feature is available on the testnet, but that feature does not mean Payward’s market is available for trading.
Participation, according to Payward, will be limited to accounts that complete NinjaTrader’s account-opening procedures and appear on the allowlists maintained by both NinjaTrader and Bitnomial. Therefore, the availability of an access-restriction feature on the testnet is not enough to begin customer trading, as the proposed launch remains subject to regulatory approval and the access requirements announced by the company. The announcement did not specify a trading start date or provide further details about the proposed contracts. In its statement, Hyperliquid described itself as “a neutral infrastructure layer designed to support broad parts of the financial system.” That description places the anticipated expansion in the context of the platform’s effort to host markets beyond cryptocurrency trading, without changing the project’s stated conditions.
Payward bases its case for the market’s importance on perpetual-futures activity outside the United States, saying they have been traded abroad since 2016 and global notional trading volume exceeded $85 trillion during 2025. It also said Hyperliquid recorded trading volume of more than $200 billion in the thirty days preceding the September 16 announcement. The company cited CoinGecko’s ranking, which named Hyperliquid the most active on-chain perpetual-futures platform in 2025. These figures show the scale of activity Payward associates with the platform and the category of contracts it is targeting, while the proposed entry into the U.S. market remains subject to approval. Payward completed its acquisition of Bitnomial on May 1, 2026, and said the deal gave it a full U.S. digital-asset derivatives group licensed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Payward says it had 6.6 million funded accounts as of June 30, 2026, and that an independent accountant’s review of its proof of reserves showed customer assets were backed by more than 100%. These figures form part of the company’s background on its infrastructure and accounts, while the announcement for the proposed market sets out the roles of Bitnomial and NinjaTrader and the eligibility conditions for traders. At the HIP-3 protocol level, The Block reported that total open interest on Hyperliquid reached $14.3 billion in September 2026. According to the report, HIP-3’s share of total open interest rose from 18% in March to more than 34% in August. The report also said HIP-3 market developers may retain up to half of trading fees in the markets they deploy, compared with about 97% of fees from core cryptocurrency perpetual contracts being directed to HYPE buybacks.
EL7 data showed HYPE closing at $76.69 on October 24, 2026, then at $78.41 on October 26, $81.32 on October 27, and $81.15 on October 28. These daily closes provide a sequence of price movements around the period when the news was published, but do not establish an intraday gain of 5% following the announcement. Separately, Investing.com’s HYPE/USD index recorded a close of $78.1405 on October 27, down 0.26% for the day. The index had closed at $94.1522 on October 5, according to the same data. On October 27, Payward announced that CF Benchmarks would provide benchmark price data for the proposed U.S. contracts through CFB Oracle, as the oracle provider for the upcoming product; the launch remained subject to regulatory approval in that announcement.