$HYPE today set a new ATH above $90 and +11% for the day.
One reason. And it’s bigger than it seems at first glance.
What happened
Kraken, more precisely its parent company Payward, announced that it is taking HYPE to the US market via CFTC-regulated perpetual futures.
This is the first time in history that a registered US exchange is moving onto Hyperliquid.
Why this is a big deal: Hyperliquid is currently processing over $4 billion in daily volume and holding 9% of all open positions in perpetual futures worldwide. At the same time, American users are completely blocked from the platform. All of this volume, all of this liquidity, without one of the largest crypto markets on the planet.
Payward changes everything. Through its subsidiary structures Bitnomial (a CFTC-regulated exchange) and NinjaTrader Clearing, they’re providing access for U.S. clients. 6.6 million accounts on Kraken alone, which previously couldn’t trade HYPE on-chain.
Numbers after the announcement
HYPE futures open interest jumped to $2.92 billion, +2.5% in the four hours after the news. On Binance, open interest spiked by 7%. Trading volume rose by 30% over 24 hours.
ATH before the announcement: $89.57. Now: above $90, price discovery.
Over the year, HYPE grew by 211%. From November 2024, when the token traded at $7.56, to today’s $90+—that’s more than 11x.
Why it’s not just hype
Hyperliquid launched another feature that few people noticed amid the Kraken news: manual lending. Now you can use HYPE or Bitcoin as collateral and borrow USDC or USDT directly. In the first days after launch, the protocol already has $269 million in borrowed assets.
This changes tokenomics. HYPE is moving from being a "simple DEX token" to becoming a collateral asset in a broader DeFi ecosystem.
Protocol revenue after a 43% drop in Q3 2025 rebounded to $202 million in Q2 2026. Now that the U.S. market is open, this figure could grow faster.
What’s next
Technically, HYPE is in price discovery right now—there are no established support levels above. The next psychological level is: $100.
But there’s a catch: the Payward announcement doesn’t mean a launch yet. Regulatory approval will take 10 to 12 months, according to estimates from a former SEC adviser. That means real inflows of American users are, at best, by the end of 2027.
The market is pricing in the future ahead of time. The question is how far ahead—and whether the price runs too far before the actual opening.
RSI above 80 is an overbought zone. Support: $86-88. If HYPE doesn’t hold $88 in the next few days, it could pull back to $82-83, quite realistically, before the next move up.
Follow along if you want to see this kind of breakdown next time when the market moves for real.
This is not financial advice. Do your own analysis.