Payward plans to offer U.S. clients onchain perpetual futures on Hyperliquid

The central point of the deal is Payward is trying to bring a popular offshore and onchain trading product into a regulated U.S. structure while keeping trade matching and recordkeeping on Hyperliquid.

"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," said Jon Pham, head of U.S. derivatives.

Payward acquired Bitnomial in May for $550 million. It bought NinjaTrader Clearing for $1.5 billion in 2025.

Perpetuals are derivative products that allow investors to place positions on the price movements of an underlying digital asset without owning the asset itself. Unlike traditional futures contracts, perps do not expire and can be maintained indefinitely. Traders make or receive periodic funding payments to keep their positions open.

The markets will run on Hyperliquid's public blockchain, whose onchain order book matches and records trades. Bitnomial Exchange and Bitnomial Clearinghouse would act as the HIP-3 deployer, creating, owning and administering the market and clearing and settling the contracts. NinjaTrader Clearing, Payward’s registered futures commission merchant, would carry client accounts.

Payward did not disclose a fee schedule, expected trading volumes, details of any economic arrangement with Hyperliquid or a planned launch date. A Kraken spokesperson said it could not speculate on the potential revenue this would bring to the company, and did not address questions about expected trading volumes.