Original | Odaily Planet Daily

Author｜Azuma

Original Title: "Hyperliquid's Path to Enter the U.S. Disclosed, Restrictions Still Severe"

On the evening of September 16, Beijing time, Kraken's parent company Payward officially announced the details of its collaboration with Hyperliquid, including the path for introducing the latter's product services into the U.S. market.

According to the announcement, Payward plans to build a custom perpetual contract trading market based on HIP-3 on Hyperliquid's mainnet through its trading and clearing institution Bitnomial and futures broker NinjaTrader Clearing, and to open the trading services in this market to eligible U.S. users.

Trump's Forecast is Finally Coming to Fruition

The earliest clue about Hyperliquid's entry into the U.S. traces back to Trump's speech at the White House last month.

Prior to this, Hyperliquid's offshore nature was viewed as a compliance weakness; however, when Trump personally stated, "Michael (CFTC Chairman Michael Selig) is also working hard to push Hyperliquid to enter the U.S. in a fully compliant and legal manner", the market began to speculate about the specific ways Hyperliquid would enter the world's largest financial market.

The day after Trump's speech, Blockworks analyst Shaunda Devens found that a deployer named "Kraken HIP-3 test DEX" had enabled permission management features (Star gating) on the Hyperliquid test network, which went live for testing on August 19. Devens speculated that Kraken might be one of the first U.S. centralized exchanges to collaborate with Hyperliquid.

Then, on September 1, Bloomberg reported evidence supporting this speculation—Hyperliquid is in deep negotiations with Kraken's parent company Payward; if the related cooperation is ultimately approved by regulators, U.S. users will be able to trade perpetual contracts linked to token prices on the Hyperliquid blockchain through Bitnomial.

As of yesterday, Payward officially confirmed the collaboration details with Hyperliquid. According to the announcement, Payward is not directly introducing Hyperliquid as a whole into the U.S. but is starting with HIP-3 to deploy a licensed perpetual contract market for U.S. users on the Hyperliquid public chain.

Specifically, Payward's Bitnomial, which is regulated by the CFTC, will be responsible for deploying the HIP-3 market on Hyperliquid and overseeing the creation, ownership, management, and settlement of contracts, while NinjaTrader Clearing, a futures broker registered with the CFTC under the Payward umbrella, will manage U.S. client accounts. The relevant entities will also bear corresponding regulatory and compliance obligations.

This means that trading will still occur on Hyperliquid's public chain, and orders will continue to be matched and recorded by Hyperliquid's on-chain order book, but the account, clearing, and compliance framework for U.S. users accessing this market will be handled by the regulated entities under Payward. According to Payward, U.S. clients can open futures accounts through their registered brokers and then trade these new perpetual futures contracts on Hyperliquid; these products will go live according to Bitnomial’s rules once they receive regulatory approval.

From this perspective, Hyperliquid's entry into the U.S. represents a pathway to integrate its on-chain infrastructure into the U.S. compliant derivatives framework—Hyperliquid provides the underlying public chain, order book, and trading infrastructure, while U.S. compliant entities like Payward are responsible for incorporating U.S. users, brokers, clearing, and regulatory requirements.

Restrictions Still Exist

Another noteworthy detail in the announcement is that Hyperliquid's entry into the U.S. still faces significant restrictions in terms of the product services that can be offered.

First, the trading experience that Hyperliquid originally offered will still require a strict access mechanism in the U.S. market. Payward clearly stated in the announcement that only accounts that have been approved by NinjaTrader and simultaneously entered the whitelist of both NinjaTrader and Bitnomial can participate in trading in these markets. In other words, U.S. users cannot directly enter Hyperliquid and trade freely like users in other regions; they must first go through a regulated account system.

Secondly, the currently disclosed scope is limited to the HIP-3 market deployed by Bitnomial, rather than all existing perpetual contracts on the Hyperliquid mainnet. This means that even if the products receive official approval in the future, what assets U.S. users can trade, how much leverage they can use, and whether they will be able to access other markets on Hyperliquid later will still depend on Payward, Bitnomial, and the U.S. regulatory framework, rather than solely on the Hyperliquid protocol itself. Therefore, a more accurate description of this cooperation is that Payward has established a "compliance zone" for U.S. users on Hyperliquid.

Thus, this cooperation effectively bridges the U.S. regulatory framework with Hyperliquid's on-chain trading infrastructure, rather than fully opening the U.S. market to Hyperliquid.

Legislative Roadblocks, Regulation Preceding

Interestingly, on the same day that Payward disclosed Hyperliquid's path to the U.S., another less-than-optimistic piece of news arrived regarding the American crypto regulatory environment—the U.S. Senate, with a procedural vote result of 49 to 50, failed to advance the CLARITY Act early on September 16, Beijing time. This bill originally aimed to further clarify the regulatory boundaries of digital assets through congressional legislation, delineating the regulatory responsibilities of the SEC and CFTC in different digital asset markets.

However, if one shifts focus away from Congress, the actual progression of U.S. crypto regulation has not come to a complete standstill. This year, the SEC and CFTC have continued to define certain regulatory boundaries for digital assets and derivatives through existing regulatory tools such as interpretations, guidance letters, and No-Action Letters.

Putting these two events together reveals the current reality of U.S. crypto regulation—complete rules at the congressional level have not yet materialized, but regulatory agencies have begun using their existing authority to gradually find executable compliance paths for products such as on-chain trading and perpetual contracts.

For Hyperliquid, this collaboration with Payward may well be a microcosm of this regulatory environment. It has not waited for a complete new law to open the U.S. market; instead, it has utilized existing regulatory licenses and infrastructure from entities like Bitnomial and NinjaTrader to fit on-chain trading into the framework that current rules can accommodate. Therefore, rather than saying Hyperliquid has "entered the U.S.," it is more accurate to say it has finally found a path to attempt to enter the U.S. How far this path can go will ultimately depend on regulatory approval, the range of tradable assets, and what kind of crypto market structure the U.S. will form in the future.

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