# Is Hyperliquid Coming to the US? What Trump and the CFTC Actually Said (2026) > On August 19, 2026 Trump said CFTC Chair Mike Selig is working to bring Hyperliquid into the US. Here is the quote, the regulatory process behind it, and what has not changed for US traders. *Source: https://hyperliquidguide.com/privacy/is-hyperliquid-coming-to-the-us* > **Note:** **What changed on August 19, 2026, and what didn't.** Speaking at a White House meeting with crypto and prediction-market executives, President Trump said CFTC Chair Mike Selig was working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States "in a fully compliant and legal fashion." No launch, filing, approval, or date has been announced. As of that day the frontend at [app.hyperliquid.xyz](https://app.hyperliquid.xyz/join/Concept211) still restricted US IP addresses and the [Terms of Service still restricted use by US persons](/privacy/hyperliquid-us-availability). This page reports what was said and describes the regulatory process people are referring to. It does not make legal determinations. See the [disclaimer](/disclaimer). ## The Quote At a White House meeting on **August 19, 2026**, broadcast live, President Trump said: > "I understand that CFTC Chair Mike Selig is working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States in a fully compliant and legal fashion." The meeting put executives from crypto and prediction-market firms in a room with **CFTC** Chairman Michael Selig and SEC Chairman Paul Atkins. Coverage ahead of the event listed Coinbase, Ripple, a16z, Chainlink, Kalshi, Polymarket and Paradigm among the attendees. The CFTC's own site framed the session as the lead-in to its Innovation Advisory Committee meeting the following day. Two things got run together in most of the reaction, and they are worth pulling apart. First, look at what the sentence actually is. A president is relaying his understanding of what an agency head is working on. It is not a rulemaking, a filing, a registration, or an approval, and it does not commit the CFTC to anything. Second, it did not come out of nowhere. The CFTC has spent 2026 building a route for perpetual futures to trade on regulated US venues, and Hyperliquid has come up by name in a congressional hearing and in the chairman's own comments. That is the part worth paying attention to. The remark is a headline; the track record underneath it is the actual story. > **Key takeaway:** A statement that someone is "working to bring" a venue onshore describes a process, not an outcome. Nothing about US access to Hyperliquid changed on August 19, 2026. ## How This Story Got Here | Date | What happened | |---|---| | **Feb 2026** | The Hyperliquid Policy Center launches in Washington, led by crypto lawyer Jake Chervinsky, describing its aim as a clear, regulated path for Americans to reach onchain markets | | **Mar 3, 2026** | Selig tells reporters the CFTC will clear a path for US perpetual futures "in coming weeks" | | **Apr 16, 2026** | At a House Agriculture Committee hearing, Rep. Austin Scott (R-GA) presses Selig on Hyperliquid's offshore oil perps. Selig says the goal is to "onshore those markets" | | **May 29, 2026** | The CFTC approves KalshiEX's bitcoin perpetual contract under Regulation 40.3 and issues a policy statement setting case-by-case review for further perpetuals | | **Jun 2026** | Trade coverage summarizes Selig's position: the question is not whether crypto perps exist, but whether they exist under US oversight | | **Jul 28, 2026** | Reporting describes friction between CME and the CFTC over how onchain perpetual futures should be treated | | **Aug 19, 2026** | Trump's remark at the White House meeting, with Selig and Atkins present | *Sources: contemporaneous reporting from CoinDesk, Bloomberg, The Block, Decrypt, Fortune, FinanceFeeds and U.Today, plus the CFTC's own announcements. Dates are as reported by those outlets.* --- ## Why the CFTC and Not the SEC Hyperliquid's core product is the [perpetual future](/guides/trading/perpetuals-explained), a derivatives contract with no expiry date, held open indefinitely and pulled toward the spot price by periodic funding payments. In the United States, derivatives sit under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the framework built around the Commodity Exchange Act. That is the whole reason the CFTC keeps showing up in this story while the SEC mostly does not. ![The CFTC homepage on August 19, 2026, showing the announcement of Chair Selig's Innovation Advisory Committee meeting](/images/privacy/is-hyperliquid-coming-to-the-us/cftc-gov-homepage.webp) *Source: [cftc.gov](https://www.cftc.gov), screenshot captured August 19, 2026* Perpetual futures grew up almost entirely offshore. US venues did not list them, so the liquidity went elsewhere, the product design evolved elsewhere, and eventually the users followed. Closing that gap is what the CFTC's 2026 work has been aimed at. ## What "Coming Onshore" Would Actually Involve This is the part most coverage skips, and it is the part that decides whether anything real happens. ### The Regulation 40.3 Route A designated contract market (a CFTC-registered exchange) can bring a new contract to market two ways. It can self-certify, filing with the CFTC that the contract complies with the rules. Or it can use **Regulation 40.3**, the voluntary approval process, and ask the agency to approve the listing outright. On **May 29, 2026** the CFTC approved KalshiEX's `BTCPERP` contract under Regulation 40.3. Reporting at the time described it as the first perpetual futures contract the agency had approved for listing through that mechanism. KalshiEX's argument, as summarized in legal analysis of the decision, was that what makes a contract a *future* is an ongoing payment obligation determined in the future, not whether it terminates on a fixed date. The approval leaned heavily on the bitcoin spot market specifically: its depth, its liquidity, and the fact that it trades continuously worldwide, all of which matter to whether a funding-rate mechanism can work without being pushed around. Alongside the approval, the CFTC issued a policy statement establishing that perpetuals get reviewed case by case. Contracts referencing anything other than digital commodities (think [equities](/guides/trading/equity-perps-guide), metals, agricultural products) were directed through the Regulation 40.3 process rather than self-certification. ### The Intermediary Route There is a second path, and it does not require the venue itself to register at all. A futures commission merchant, with Coinbase Financial Markets the example most often cited, can intermediate customer access to perpetuals listed elsewhere and hold the margin collateral. In that shape the regulated entity is the broker standing between the customer and the venue. Coverage of Hyperliquid's own posture has described a preference for something along these lines: licensed intermediaries acting as the regulated access point, while the chain continues to handle execution, clearing and settlement, instead of rebuilding the architecture as a registered contract market. That is a characterization drawn from public reporting and from the Hyperliquid Policy Center's stated aims. Nobody has published a filing, and it should be read that way. > **Warning:** No public filing, registration or CFTC approval naming Hyperliquid has been announced. Everything in this section describes mechanisms that exist and have been used by other venues. Which of them applies to Hyperliquid, if any, is not something this site can tell you, and anyone quoting you a date is guessing. **Trading Where You're Eligible** — Hyperliquid offers self-custody perps with no identity verification in the jurisdictions it serves. Use our referral link for a 4% lifetime fee discount. [Join Hyperliquid - Save 4%](https://app.hyperliquid.xyz/join/Concept211) --- ## Why Congress Started Paying Attention The April 16, 2026 House Agriculture Committee hearing is where Hyperliquid stopped being a niche topic in Washington. The trigger was oil. Hyperliquid's oil perps trade around the clock, including at hours when regulated US futures markets are shut, and during the spring 2026 volatility they pulled in traders who had no particular interest in crypto. They wanted exposure to crude, and this was where they could get it at 2am. Rep. **Austin Scott** (R-GA) put the concern to Selig directly: > "If the volume that I'm seeing is correct, it has the potential to be detrimental to the U.S. consumer." Scott's point was jurisdictional rather than technical. The contracts sit offshore, outside the CFTC's reach, while the price discovery happening on them can still matter to a domestic economy. He pushed the agency to find a way to hold the venue to the standards a registered American futures exchange has to meet. Selig's answer, as reported, was that he was watching those markets and that the goal was to **"onshore those markets"** so they would fall under US regulation. Worth noting that the same hearing saw bipartisan criticism of the agency over prediction markets and staffing levels. This was not a friendly setup for the chairman, and the Hyperliquid exchange was one thread in a contentious morning. > **Key takeaway:** Congressional interest and regulatory interest point the same direction but start from different places. Lawmakers raised offshore perps as a consumer-protection and jurisdiction problem; the CFTC has framed onshoring as a market-integrity goal. ## What This Would and Wouldn't Mean for a US Trader Nothing has been approved, so everything below is a set of open questions rather than predictions. They are also the right questions to put to any claim you see about this. **Would it be the same product?** A CFTC-regulated perpetual and an offshore perpetual are not automatically the same instrument. The KalshiEX approval covered one contract, on one asset, with a specific spot-market profile behind it. Leverage limits, margin treatment, position limits, the list of eligible assets: a US framework would have something to say about all of it, and those details are what determine whether a regulated version resembles what traders use today. **Would it require KYC?** Registered US derivatives intermediaries operate under customer identification obligations. Hyperliquid today [requires no identity verification](/guides/getting-started/hyperliquid-kyc-requirements) because you connect a wallet instead of opening an account. Any route running through a registered intermediary would bring that intermediary's own onboarding requirements with it. What that would mean for the protocol's existing non-custodial design is not something anyone has published a design for. **Would fees change?** Hyperliquid's [current fee schedule](/guides/fees/fees-explained) reflects the structure it has now. Regulated venues and intermediaries carry costs that a permissionless protocol does not, including clearing and capital requirements. There is no basis yet for putting numbers on that, so this page will not. **Would it happen at all?** Regulatory processes stall. The CFTC has faced [reported vacancy and staffing constraints](https://www.theblock.co/post/407785/white-house-defends-trumps-regulatory-appointments-as-cftc-vacancies-complicate-crypto-bill-push), the CLARITY Act has not moved, and there is documented friction with incumbent exchanges over how onchain perps should be handled. A statement of intent in August removes none of that. For now the practical position is unchanged, and it is covered in detail on the [US availability page](/privacy/hyperliquid-us-availability). The frontend restricts US IP addresses, the Terms of Service restrict US persons, and any reader with a specific situation should be talking to a qualified attorney rather than reading a guide. --- ## What to Watch Next These are the signals that would mean the story has actually moved, as opposed to another round of commentary: - **A Regulation 40.3 submission** naming Hyperliquid or a Hyperliquid-linked contract. This is the concrete, checkable one. CFTC filings and approvals are published at [cftc.gov](https://www.cftc.gov). - **A DCM registration application**, if the route taken turns out to be the venue registering as an exchange itself rather than working through intermediaries. - **An FCM announcement**, meaning a registered futures commission merchant stating it will intermediate access to Hyperliquid-listed contracts. - **CFTC guidance or an advisory** addressing onchain venues and perpetual futures as a category, rather than one contract at a time. - **Publications from the Hyperliquid Policy Center**, which is the entity doing the Washington-facing work on this. - **Legislative movement on the CLARITY Act**, which Selig has publicly said would otherwise leave regulators "writing all the rules." Every one of those is verifiable from a primary source. A screenshot of someone reporting that someone said something is not, and this page gets updated when the former happens rather than the latter. ## Related Reading - [Is Hyperliquid available in the US?](/privacy/hyperliquid-us-availability): what the current restriction covers at a technical level - [Hyperliquid KYC requirements](/guides/getting-started/hyperliquid-kyc-requirements): why there is no identity verification today - [Hyperliquid vs. Coinbase](/compare/hyperliquid-vs-coinbase): a regulated US venue compared feature by feature - [Canonical outcome markets on Hyperliquid](/ecosystem/hyperliquid-canonical-outcome-markets): the prediction-market side of the same regulatory conversation - [Hyperliquid tax reporting](/guides/trading/hyperliquid-tax-reporting-guide): exporting trade history, which none of this affects - [How to trade on Hyperliquid](/guides/getting-started/how-to-trade-on-hyperliquid): the mechanics, for readers who are eligible **Get the 4% Fee Discount** — If you're eligible to use Hyperliquid, signing up through our referral link takes 4% off every trade for life. [Start Trading](https://app.hyperliquid.xyz/join/Concept211) ## Summary On August 19, 2026 President Trump said, in remarks broadcast from a White House meeting, that CFTC Chair Mike Selig was working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States in a fully compliant and legal fashion. That remark sits on top of a documented year: Selig's March comments about clearing a path for US perpetual futures, the April House Agriculture Committee exchange where Hyperliquid came up by name, the CFTC's May approval of a bitcoin perpetual on a registered exchange, and the Hyperliquid Policy Center's Washington work since February. What has not happened is any filing, registration, approval or announced date involving Hyperliquid. US access remains restricted at the frontend and under the Terms of Service. This page reports statements and describes public regulatory mechanisms. It does not determine what is lawful for any reader, and it is not legal or tax advice. For anything that turns on your own situation, talk to a qualified attorney or tax professional, and read the [disclaimer](/disclaimer) for the full scope of what this site does and does not represent.