In a recent interview in Washington, Hyperliquid co-founder Jeff Yan described the protocol as blockchain infrastructure for financial trading rather than a crypto exchange. Under his US plan, firms offering products on top of Hyperliquid would handle know-your-customer checks and market surveillance themselves.

The model is already taking shape. Payward, the parent of Kraken, plans to offer Hyperliquid-based perpetual futures to US investors through Bitnomial and NinjaTrader Clearing, while Intercontinental Exchange is taking a minority stake in HIP-3 platform Trade.xyz to build a US perpetuals market, pending regulatory approval.

Hyperliquid's trailing 12-month revenue stands at $713M, and Trade.xyz has passed $500B in cumulative trading volume.

Hyperliquid still officially restricts US users. Yan named tokenized real-world assets, including shares of large companies, as a next area of growth, though any such markets would depend on outside builders launching them.