Hyperliquid surges after Bloomberg reports talks with Payward for US market entry

HYPE, the native token of on-chain perpetual futures platform Hyperliquid, has surged past $83 following reports that Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, is in discussions about bringing Hyperliquid’s products to the US market. The token’s market cap swelled to between $17 billion and $21 billion during the rally.

Weekly gains topped 35% as traders priced in the possibility that America’s most restricted crypto market segment, on-chain perpetual futures, might finally get a compliant on-ramp.

What’s driving the rally

The price action kicked into gear after President Donald Trump remarked on August 19-20 that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission was taking steps to onboard Hyperliquid in a compliant manner. Those comments alone sent HYPE up roughly 19-20% in a single session, with the token hitting intraday highs around $77.55 on August 21 before continuing its climb above $83.

Payward acquired Bitnomial, a CFTC-licensed exchange, giving it the derivatives licensing infrastructure that most crypto firms simply don’t have.

A “Kraken HIP-3 test DEX” was enabled around August 19, initiating permission controls on the Hyperliquid testnet.

The regulatory puzzle

Hyperliquid currently operates as an offshore platform and explicitly restricts access to US users. Perpetual futures are contracts that let traders bet on price movements with leverage but never expire, and in the US, offering leveraged derivatives requires CFTC registration.

Through its Bitnomial acquisition, Payward holds CFTC licensing that could theoretically serve as a bridge between Hyperliquid’s on-chain architecture and US compliance requirements. Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 framework, which enables third-party markets to deploy on its infrastructure, provides the technical mechanism for such a partnership.

Payward’s broader ambitions

On August 10, Payward launched xStocks, a tokenized equities product built on Hyperliquid’s HyperCore infrastructure. The product includes tokenized versions of assets like NVDAx and SPYx, essentially on-chain representations of Nvidia stock and the S&P 500 ETF. Those xStocks products are currently not available to US investors. Payward has also been forming partnerships with traditional finance players including Nasdaq.

What this means for the market

If Hyperliquid successfully gains US market access through a Payward partnership, it would represent the first time an on-chain perpetual futures platform operated within American regulatory guardrails. On-chain perpetual futures currently handle billions in daily volume globally, almost none of it from US-based participants.

The HIP-3 permission controls being tested on the Hyperliquid testnet suggest some form of identity verification or access restriction. Competitors including dYdX and GMX face similar US access restrictions.

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