President Trump says he wants Hyperliquid to enter the US — here’s how it could happen

Perpetual futures contracts on the decentralized exchange Hyperliquid have exploded in popularity over the past year, drawing traders with the ability to bet on crypto prices around the clock. However, Hyperliquid’s platform is not currently available to U.S. traders.

Now, President Donald Trump says his administration is working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States "in a fully compliant and legal fashion," raising a deceptively simple question: How?

Last month, Trump said the Commodity Futures Trading Commission would work to bring Hyperliquid into the U.S. Then, crypto exchange Kraken's parent company said it was working with the CFTC to offer registered U.S. users access to a selection of crypto perps linked to markets on Hyperliquid and its underlying Layer 1 blockchain through Bitnomial, a CFTC-regulated platform. 

That arrangement could allow Hyperliquid (HYPE) to provide certain parts of the underlying technology, liquidity, or market design, without actually opening its existing venue to people in the U.S., said Nansen Research Analyst Nicolai Sondergaard.

"It would be a separate U.S. product built around Hyperliquid’s infrastructure, and the final structure has not yet been formally announced," Sondergaard said in an email. 

That distinction between Hyperliquid's existing venue and a U.S. centric platform is important, Sondergaard added, because currently people in the U.S. can technically access Hyperliquid through the underlying chain, but Hyperliquid's terms restrict people in the U.S.

"The proposed arrangement would provide a formal route through a regulated intermediary, with KYC [know your customer], sanctions screening, customer-fund protections and a clear legal entity responsible for the product," Sondergaard said. "The trade-off is that U.S. users would probably get fewer markets, lower leverage and more conservative risk controls than users on the permissionless venue."

Still, Sondergaard said he doesn't think that should mean that Hyperliquid should be "fully KYC-gated."

"Blanket KYC would mainly remove privacy and permissionless access for legitimate users while pushing liquidity offshore," Sondergaard said. "A regulated U.S. access layer is more useful because it gives users a compliant option without requiring the entire global market to operate under one model."

CFTC-SEC

Both the CFTC and its sister agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, would likely need to be involved in writing revised interpretive rules involving custody and mechanics around current routing standards, former SEC senior counsel Ashley Ebersole told The Block, ahead of news of Payward's proposal. Ebersole is currently the co-founder and chief legal officer at real-world assets platform tx.

But the partnership between Bitnomial and Hyperliquid gives them a regulatory head start, Ebersole said.

"Partnerships of this type provide the regulatory infrastructure that would have added months or years to Hyperliquid’s US roadmap if pursued on its own," Ebersole said. "The assets to be offered still need to be approved, but Kraken and Bitnomial’s involvement materially accelerates the timeline for launching them here."

Some groups are pushing for both agencies to work together. In a letter last month, the Hyperliquid Policy Center urged the SEC and CFTC to adopt a harmonized framework for perpetual contracts.

The CFTC has already taken steps toward bringing perpetuals into regulated U.S. markets. In May, cleared the way for bitcoin perpetual futures contracts to be listed in the U.S when it greenlit KalshiEX and Coinbase to list the products. On Thursday, Coinbase said it filed a notice registration form with the SEC to get its sign-off to begin listing equity perpetuals.

Changing rules at the SEC and CFTC, however, is notoriously slow. Even if regulators moved quickly, revisions could take up to a year, Ebersole said.

Both the Trump administration and Trump himself have "very bullish views" on ensuring that the U.S. is the leader of the financial world, he said, but the 2028 presidential elections could shift those priorities.

"In a case like that, it really just becomes dependent on what the next administration's appetite is if you can't get it done in the remaining years of the Trump administration," he said.

A new era for markets

For decades, U.S. markets have been built to operate largely from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET and are closed on holidays and weekends. But that model has increasingly come under pressure as exchanges and other market operators move toward around-the-clock trading. Major venues such as CME already offer liquidity nearly 24 hours a day, five days a week.

If Hyperliquid were to launch an operational U.S. venue, it could add pressure on traditional markets to accelerate that shift.

"If theoretically Hyperliquid came onshore and was up and running in the U.S. and available to U.S. persons, then that would be additional motivation for existing markets to move in the direction of the features being offered on that new competitor," Ebersole said.

The growth of Hyperliquid and perpetuals has also raised concerns.

Mark Hays, associate director for cryptocurrency and financial technology with Americans for Financial Reform and Demand Progress, said the administration's push for platforms like Hyperliquid "has a checkered history" and can lead to financial instability.

"The Trump administration's efforts to pave the way for crypto firms like Kraken and Hyperliquid to get quick easy access to US markets isn't surprising - given the long pattern of collusion between the administration and the crypto industry - but it does suggest regulators are failing to heed the lessons of the past - which could have far-reaching impacts across all US financial markets," Hays said in an email.

CME CEO Terrence Duffy has repeatedly pushed back against crypto perpetuals, reportedly calling them a "disaster waiting to happen," and also sued the CFTC over the agency's approval of perpetual futures.

Legacy players want to defend their turf, said Ebersole, citing a brewing fight in Congress between banks and crypto over stablecoin rewards as lawmakers work to pass broader crypto legislation.

Those legacy stakeholders could do that by demanding that new entrants in perpetuals follow the current rules, he said.

"You can also take the regulatory angle and say those products shouldn't be offered in any case because they don't comply with the existing rulebook, which is why I think we're seeing changes in that rulebook would likely be needed to allow something like this to happen," Ebersole said.