Hyperliquid Strategies disclosed in its quarterly results on Thursday that a subsidiary had applied to become a U.S. futures commission merchant, or FCM. The move would give the Nasdaq-listed HYPE treasury firm a potential operating business alongside its token holdings—and a role in opening regulated access to Hyperliquid-based perpetual futures for Americans.
Reporting context: Decrypt published the original report on November 7, 2026, at 03:46:03 UTC+8. The application was not an approval: regulators still needed to sign off on both the broker registration and the permissioned markets it would serve. The company provided no timeline.
A regulated route to markets that currently block U.S. users
Hyperliquid Strategies trades under the ticker PURR and is chaired by former Barclays CEO Bob Diamond. Its proposed FCM would hold customer funds and handle futures orders as a CFTC-registered broker. If approved, the subsidiary would carry U.S. client accounts for permissioned markets built on Hyperliquid.
Perpetual futures have no expiration date and allow traders to take leveraged positions. Hyperliquid is a major onchain venue for these contracts, but it still blocks U.S. users.
The proposed route relies on a permissioned version of Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 framework. Under HIP-3, outside firms can launch perpetual markets on Hyperliquid’s order book after staking HYPE. The permissioned version, HIP-3*, would allow a regulated deployer to restrict markets to approved traders, while Hyperliquid acts as neutral infrastructure.
How the brokerage plan connects to the treasury
“We deployed $802 million this quarter and filed an application to become a futures commission merchant,” CEO David Schamis said. “Those two moves are the same bet.”
At the end of September, the firm held about 38.5 million HYPE, worth roughly $3.5 billion. More U.S. trading routed through Hyperliquid would likely generate more protocol fees; Hyperliquid uses fee revenue to buy back HYPE. That is a potential link between expanded access and the treasury’s holdings, not evidence that the application itself will produce trading activity or token gains.
During the quarter, Hyperliquid Strategies:
- Spent $785 million buying 9.1 million HYPE.
- Spent $17 million repurchasing 2.7 million of its own shares.
- Raised $911 million through stock sales, which largely funded those purchases.
- Reported $620.6 million in net income, driven almost entirely by $803 million in unrealized gains as HYPE rose from about $65 to $91.
The distinction matters: the reported earnings were driven primarily by changes in the value of its HYPE holdings, rather than an established futures brokerage operation.
Other firms are pursuing U.S. access
Kraken parent Payward had also said it planned to deploy HIP-3* markets through its CFTC-regulated Bitnomial exchange, with NinjaTrader Clearing serving as the FCM.
In the week before the report, NYSE owner Intercontinental Exchange agreed to work with Trade[XYZ] to bring Hyperliquid-based perpetual futures to the U.S. Decrypt reported that HYPE rose 13% on that development. Trade[XYZ] already operates markets on Hyperliquid, including perpetual futures tied to the S&P 500.
For Hyperliquid Strategies, the proposed brokerage would add a business beyond holding tokens. But at the time of reporting, both its registration and the permissioned markets remained subject to regulatory approval. The prospective access-and-fee mechanism was therefore still conditional, not an operating result.
