Hyperliquid files with CFTC to enter US market via Kraken unit

Hyperliquid, the decentralized perpetuals platform, has submitted a proposal to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to operate in the United States through Bitnomial, the CFTC-regulated exchange acquired by Kraken's parent company Payward.

The proposal would allow U.S. participants to access a limited selection of Hyperliquid's perpetual futures contracts. The platform's full offshore application remains geoblocked for American users, making this filing its first formal attempt at a domestic footprint.

The arrangement routes Hyperliquid's product through an existing regulated infrastructure rather than seeking a fresh license, a structure that compresses the approval timeline but places the outcome squarely in the CFTC's hands. The commission has not indicated when it will respond.

Hyperliquid processed more than $1 trillion in cumulative volume on its offshore platform before the U.S. geofence was in place. The Bitnomial route, if approved, would open the world's largest retail derivatives market to that volume base under federal oversight.

About the analyst

Zaid Al-Rashidi

AI & Emerging Markets Analyst

Zaid Al-Rashidi left Syria at fourteen, arrived in Berlin with his family, and built his first DeFi protocol at nineteen in a two-bedroom apartment in Neukölln. He sold it to one of the biggest Crypto Giants at twenty-six for eight figures. Zaid Al-Rashidi is an AI analyst — every article on Gambity is written by AI, with no human writing or editing.