Kraken parent Payward plans first CFTC-regulated Hyperliquid perpetuals

Hyperliquid picked Payward to run the first CFTC-supervised perpetual venues on its HIP-3 system, in a Monday announcement on X. Payward is Kraken's parent company. Bitnomial, its registered trading venue and clearinghouse, would build and operate the venues, while NinjaTrader Clearing, its registered brokerage arm, would hold customer accounts. The plan covers perpetual futures for traders in the United States, using Hyperliquid's chain and order book as the base layer. Regulators still have to sign off. HYPE changed hands at $77.50 in FXStreet's October 27 report, up nearly 3% over 24 hours.

Nothing trades yet. No launch date has been set, and the access-control feature behind the plan runs only on testnet.

Here is how the split works, per FXStreet and The Block. Hyperliquid supplies the chain and the order book, and says deployers keep control of their own venues. Bitnomial takes the regulated middle: listing, clearing and settlement under its own exchange rules. NinjaTrader Clearing takes the client side, holding accounts and running onboarding. A customer would need to finish onboarding with NinjaTrader and land on both firms' approval lists before trading. That gate is the whole idea. It lets a regulated firm decide who can enter its venues, while the underlying chain stays open to everyone else. Payward sketched this shape in a September 16 statement. Bloomberg had covered Payward's exploration of the idea in August.

Why it matters

The access gate answers a criticism that flared days earlier. CME chief executive Terry Duffy complained last week that the platform lacked identity checks, per Stocktwits, and asked who was even on it. A deployer-controlled approval list turns that complaint into a design choice: the venue operator picks its traders. Hyperliquid co-founder Jeff Yan praised Kraken's standing among crypto exchanges, per Stocktwits. CFTC Chairman Michael Selig had said earlier in 2026 that onchain technology could open a path for such markets into the United States, per Stocktwits. Put together, the three remarks trace one argument: regulated firms, not protocols, should hold the keys to US access.

The Hyperliquid plan is the US leg of a wider Payward expansion. Kraken opened bitcoin and ether options to eligible European clients on Kraken Pro this week, and the group secured in-principle approval in Kazakhstan days earlier, covered in Kraken opens BTC, ETH options in Europe and Payward's Kazakhstan step. Each region gets its own licensed entity in front. More on the exchange sits on the Kraken exchange page.

What to watch

• Regulator sign-off for the Payward deployment, which Hyperliquid and Payward both flag as pending.
• The HIP-3* mainnet upgrade, which must ship before any permissioned venue can open; the current build is testnet-only.
• How the approval list works in practice, including whether identity checks sit inside market access, a point The Block flags as unresolved.
• HYPE's next move: a later reading put the 24-hour gain above 0.6%, against the near-3% figure in FXStreet's earlier report.

Key points

• Hyperliquid picked Payward for the first CFTC-supervised HIP-3 deployment, in a Monday post on X.
• Bitnomial would build, own and run the venues, and handle clearing and settlement.
• NinjaTrader Clearing would hold customer accounts and run onboarding.
• Access runs through a deployer-controlled approval list; current markets stay untouched.
• Payward sketched the plan on September 16; Bloomberg had covered its exploration in August.
• HIP-3* runs on testnet with draft-stage specs; no launch date has been set.

MarketRadar take

This is a plumbing story, not a price call. A regulated deployer on a public onchain order book would hand US traders a compliant route into a market that has sat outside CFTC oversight. It would also hand Hyperliquid an answer to the identity-check criticism, without touching its current permissionless venues. The market reaction so far looks modest: HYPE sat at $77.50 with a near-3% 24-hour gain in FXStreet's October 27 report, set against a rise of more than 200% since the year began, per Stocktwits, which also put retail sentiment in negative territory with muted chatter. Approval and the mainnet upgrade are the two gates. Until both clear, the read stays neutral, and the story stays in the regulatory file rather than the trading book.