Kraken’s parent Payward plans onchain perpetual futures for US traders

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Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, is preparing to bring onchain perpetual futures to American traders through a regulated market structure built around Hyperliquid’s public blockchain. The plan, still contingent on regulatory sign-off, would mark one of the first attempts to fold a popular offshore derivatives product directly into a U.S.-compliant framework.

Key takeaways

Payward plans to offer U.S. clients access to perpetual futures on Hyperliquid’s public blockchain, pending regulatory approval.
The contracts would run under CFTC-regulated Bitnomial Exchange, Payward’s designated contract market.
U.S. clients would need futures accounts with NinjaTrader Clearing and approval from both NinjaTrader Clearing and Bitnomial.
Global perpetual futures trading topped $85 trillion in 2025, with Hyperliquid settling roughly 9% of all open positions worldwide, according to CoinGecko.
Payward acquired Bitnomial for $550 million in May and had already acquired NinjaTrader Clearing for $1.5 billion in 2025 to build out this regulatory stack.

Payward’s Plan to Offer Onchain Perpetual Futures to U.S. Clients

Payward‘s proposal would let U.S. clients trade perpetual futures contracts built specifically for Hyperliquid’s blockchain, provided regulators give the green light. This would represent a notable shift for a corner of the derivatives market that has largely operated beyond the reach of U.S. oversight.

Regulatory approval and contract framework

The contracts would be listed under Bitnomial Exchange, a designated contract market that answers to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Because Bitnomial already operates as Payward’s regulated venue, the company is essentially trying to route an onchain product through an existing compliance channel rather than building a new one from scratch.

If regulators sign off, U.S. clients would be able to trade newly created Payward contracts directly on Hyperliquid’s public blockchain — a first for a registered U.S. exchange, according to Payward co-CEO Arjun Sethi.

Client account and custody requirements

Access wouldn’t be automatic. Clients would need to open futures accounts with Payward’s broker, NinjaTrader Clearing, and separately secure approval from both NinjaTrader Clearing and Bitnomial before trading. That dual-approval structure signals how carefully Payward is trying to thread the needle between decentralized infrastructure and U.S. compliance expectations.

Market Context and Trading Infrastructure

Perpetual futures have quietly become one of the biggest corners of global crypto trading, even though most of that volume has sat outside U.S. regulated markets since the product debuted in 2016. More than $85 trillion changed hands worldwide in 2025 alone, according to CoinGecko’s 2026 State of Crypto Perpetuals Report.

Global perpetual futures trading volumes and Hyperliquid’s market share

Hyperliquid’s decentralized exchange settles roughly 9% of all open perpetual futures positions worldwide, a meaningful slice of a market that has traditionally avoided U.S. jurisdiction. That scale is part of why bringing even a portion of this activity into a CFTC-regulated wrapper matters — it could open a compliant path for a trading product that American investors have largely accessed only through offshore venues.

Structure of contract clearing and custody

Under the proposed setup, Bitnomial Exchange and Bitnomial Clearinghouse would act as the HIP-3 deployer — the entity that creates, owns and administers the market, while also clearing and settling the contracts. NinjaTrader Clearing, Payward’s registered futures commission merchant, would carry the actual client accounts. Trade matching and recordkeeping, meanwhile, would stay on Hyperliquid’s onchain order book.

Jon Pham, Payward’s head of U.S. derivatives, described how the mechanics would work in practice: “A U.S. client would open a futures account with Payward’s registered broker and trade new perpetual futures contracts on Hyperliquid, cleared through the same clearinghouse that already supports the crypto perpetual contracts Payward offers U.S. clients today.”

Corporate Acquisitions Supporting the Offering

None of this would be possible without two sizable acquisitions Payward made to assemble a full derivatives stack. The company bought Bitnomial in May for $550 million, and it had already acquired NinjaTrader Clearing for $1.5 billion in 2025. Together, those deals gave Payward both the regulated exchange and the clearing broker it now needs to support onchain perpetual futures under U.S. rules.

This matters beyond Payward’s own business. It shows a regulated U.S. exchange operator effectively buying its way into pieces of infrastructure that let it plug a decentralized product into a compliant framework — rather than waiting for new rules to emerge organically.

Offering Structure and Uncertainties

The deal’s core idea is straightforward even if its execution is complex: keep the trade matching and record-keeping on Hyperliquid’s chain while wrapping the regulatory, clearing and custody layers around it through Bitnomial and NinjaTrader Clearing.

Trade matching on Hyperliquid with regulated clearing

Perpetuals differ from standard futures in that they never expire. Traders can hold positions indefinitely, exchanging periodic funding payments to keep them open. That structure has made perpetuals hugely popular globally, and it’s the same structure Payward wants to make available to U.S. clients — just routed through regulated clearing rather than an offshore platform.

Lack of disclosed fees, volumes, and launch details

Payward has not released a fee schedule, projected trading volumes, or a launch date. It also hasn’t detailed any economic arrangement it may have with Hyperliquid. A Kraken spokesperson said the company could not speculate on potential revenue from the plan and did not address questions about expected trading volumes. Hyperliquid did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

For Hyperliquid, the arrangement could bring a CFTC-regulated operator and a new stream of U.S.-linked activity onto its blockchain — though that doesn’t mean its existing perpetual markets would suddenly open up to U.S. customers. The companies also haven’t disclosed how any revenue generated from the new markets would be split between them.