Can you use Hyperliquid in the US?

Contents

Hyperliquid is a blockchain with a trading engine built in, and the app most people use is one interface to it among many. US access, KYC and safety all depend on that split between the chain and the apps in front of it. For how the chain itself works, start with what Hyperliquid is and how it works.

Is Hyperliquid available in the US?#

Not through the official app. The Hyperliquid terms of use govern the website at app.hyperliquid.xyz, which Hyperliquid Corp makes available. Section 1.6 says the app is not available to "Restricted Persons", defined as:

• people or entities who reside in, are located in, are incorporated in or have a registered office in the United States of America or Ontario, Canada;
• the same for jurisdictions under sanctions or export controls, which the terms call "Restricted Territories";
• citizens of Restricted Territories, wherever they live.

The terms also separate the app from the chain. Section 1.1 says Hyperliquid Corp does not own, control or operate the Hyperliquid blockchain, and that the app "is not the exclusive means of accessing Hyperliquid." That describes the architecture: wallets, trading apps and bots reach the same chain through their own interfaces. Each of those interfaces publishes its own access rules, compared in the country table below, and the ones listed there also exclude the US.

Is Hyperliquid legal or banned in the US?#

The US exclusion described above is set out in the app's terms. Section 1.3 of the Hyperliquid terms says "neither the Interface nor Hyperliquid are licensed, approved, authorized, endorsed, or registered by any governmental authority or regulatory body in any jurisdiction." Section 1.9 makes each user responsible for checking that their use complies with local law, naming "laws governing leveraged or derivative trading and outcome markets."

That is why the planned US venues below take the shape they do. A US firm registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) would operate the market, onboard customers and carry the regulatory obligations, with Hyperliquid as the infrastructure. Whether a particular use of Hyperliquid is lawful for you depends on where you are and what you do. That is a question for a lawyer, and this page does not answer it.

Can I use Hyperliquid in the US with a VPN?#

Hyperliquid's terms prohibit it. Section 3.1.5 lists "Circumvention of Restrictions" as a prohibited activity, including "using technologies such as VPNs, proxies, or other methods to conceal your location" and false statements about residency or citizenship. Under section 1.9, every user represents that they are "not using any technology or method to disguise your location or otherwise evade any access restriction." Section 6.2 lets Hyperliquid Corp suspend or end a user's access to any feature of the app, without notice, if it suspects use that "intentionally subverts the purposes or restrictions of the Interface."

Third-party interfaces say the same. The trade[XYZ] terms, last updated 6 September 2026, say "You must not use a VPN, proxy, Tor, or similar to circumvent geo-blocks or our eligibility rules." The Totalis terms, covered at the end of this page, call it a material breach. Videos and forum posts that recommend a VPN are recommending a breach of these terms.

What countries is Hyperliquid available in?#

Hyperliquid's terms list who is excluded, not where the app is available. Each interface publishes its own exclusions, so availability depends on the app you use. As of 2 November 2026:

The Phantom row is from Phantom's feature availability by region page. The Hyperliquid terms do not name the jurisdictions excluded from outcome markets; section 1.8 says Hyperliquid Corp may block the outcome markets tab for those users. Our guide to HIP-4 outcome markets explains what those markets are.

Does Hyperliquid require KYC?#

Not at the protocol level. Hyperliquid's how to start trading guide says you can trade "with a normal defi wallet or by logging in with your email address." An account on HyperCore is an address, not a profile with a name, and everything that address does is public onchain. Our guide to depositing and withdrawing on Hyperliquid covers which wallets work.

Identity checks appear where a regulated company or a formal program sits in front of Hyperliquid:

How HIP-3* allowlists work#

HIP-3 lets a builder who stakes 500,000 HYPE deploy their own perpetual futures market on HyperCore. HIP-3* is an optional extension for permissioned markets. Hyperliquid's HIP-3 deployer API reference, in a section marked testnet-only, says a venue becomes HIP-3* when it is created with isStar: true. The deployer, or a sub-deployer granted each power one by one, can then act on users of that venue:

• modifyApproval adds a user to the venue's allowlist or removes them.
• setReduceOnly limits an approved user to reducing positions.
• cancel and cancelAll cancel the user's resting orders on the venue.
• order places orders for the user, all reduce-only.
• sendAsset moves the user's collateral to another account on the same venue.

The reference scopes the allowlist and these powers to the HIP-3* venue and documents nothing that extends them to other markets. Hyperliquid's 26 October 2026 announcement calls HIP-3* "strictly additive to HIP-3", says "its use is optional and up to the deployer" and "existing markets remain unchanged", and says the testnet specifications "are preliminary and subject to change."

When will Hyperliquid be available in the US?#

No date has been announced. Two regulated US venues built on Hyperliquid were announced in autumn 2026, and both need regulatory approval first.

The Payward column is from Payward's 16 September release. The ICE column is from the ICE and trade[XYZ] release of 29 October, which also says ICE is making a strategic investment in trade[XYZ]. The release does not say ICE bought HYPE.

Hyperliquid's post on the ICE agreement sets out the split: Hyperliquid provides the infrastructure through HIP-3*, trade[XYZ] designs and implements the markets, and ICE operates the regulated venue. It adds that "existing trade[XYZ] HIP-3 markets will remain unchanged." The planned US market is a separate venue, not a change to the markets non-US users trade today. For prediction markets that are regulated in the US today, see our comparison of Hyperliquid, Polymarket and Kalshi.

How to buy Hyperliquid (HYPE) in the US#

Buying HYPE, the token, is a separate question from trading on Hyperliquid. These US routes come from the issuers' own pages and SEC filings as of 2 November 2026. None of this is a recommendation.

Sources: Bitwise's launch release and BHYP fund site, the 21Shares THYP product page, Grayscale's HYPG fund page and the Hyperliquid Strategies annual report for the year to 30 June 2026. Bitwise, 21Shares and Grayscale all state that their funds are not registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940 and that an investment in the fund is not a direct investment in HYPE.

Hyperliquid Strategies' annual report says it held about 29.4 million HYPE as of 23 August 2026 and stakes substantially all of it. On 2 November 2026, the Hyperliquid app's staking page listed a validator named "Hyperliquid Strategies x Unit" with 38,896,024 HYPE delegated to it. "Hyperliquid stock" searches mix up PURR, HYPE and the stock perps that trade on Hyperliquid; our guide to Hyperliquid stock separates them, and HYPE token staking covers what staking earns.

Singapore's MAS alert list and Hyperliquid's response#

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) added Hyperliquid to its Investor Alert List, which Hyperliquid announced on 26 June 2026. Hyperliquid's post says the listing "does not constitute a ban, an enforcement action, or a finding of wrongdoing", and describes the list as entities that "may be wrongly perceived as being licensed or in any other way authorised or regulated by MAS." It says Hyperliquid "is not, and has never claimed to be, licensed or authorised by MAS," and that nothing about the network changed. MAS's own search page returned "service unavailable" when we tried it on 2 November 2026, so the entry text is not confirmed from MAS here.

Is Hyperliquid safe?#

Hyperliquid is non-custodial in one specific sense: no company runs your account, and ordinary actions such as orders, transfers and withdrawals need a signature from your key, or for trading, from an API wallet you approved. Your key does not control everything that happens to your funds:

• USDC on HyperCore is a credit, not a token at your address. Circle's CCTP on HyperCore overview says HyperCore balances "reflect protocol-level credits" and native USDC stays in Circle's CoreDepositWallet contract on HyperEVM. Older deposits sit in the legacy Bridge2 contract on Arbitrum, which can be frozen, as the bridge section below shows. Getting native USDC out depends on those contracts.
• Liquidations close positions and move margin without your signature.
• On HIP-3* venues, a deployer can cancel your orders, reduce your positions and move your collateral within the venue. HIP-3* is testnet-only as of 2 November 2026.

The Hyperliquid terms list further risks the user carries, including oracle failures, bridge failures, validator malfunctions, phishing and compromised private keys. These are the protocol-level ones, each with its primary source.

Validator concentration#

HyperBFT, Hyperliquid's consensus, needs a quorum: Hyperliquid's staking docs define it as "any set of validators that has more than ⅔ of the total stake," and say consensus requires that a quorum of stake is honest. On 2 November 2026, the Hyperliquid app's staking page showed 439,605,816 HYPE staked. The validators named Hyper Foundation 1 to 5 held 208,155,041 of it, about 47.4%. It follows from the quorum rule that any group holding more than one third of stake could stop blocks from being committed. Validators also publish the oracle prices that perps margin against and vote on delistings, so their concentration matters more here than on a chain without a built-in exchange.

Closed-source node software#

The hyperliquid-dex/node repository holds setup instructions and a public key for verifying signed binaries. Node operators download the hl-visor binary from Hyperliquid's servers, and it verifies and runs hl-node. The node's source code is not published there, so outsiders cannot audit or rebuild it.

The bridge#

The legacy USDC bridge on Arbitrum is a smart contract controlled by the validators. Its Bridge2 source code says withdrawals are "approved by 2/3 of the validator power" and then wait out a dispute period, during which approved "lockers" can freeze the bridge, and only a quorum of validators' cold wallets can unlock it. Hyperliquid's audits page names Zellic as the bridge contract's auditor. Native USDC now reaches HyperCore through Circle's CCTP instead, and Hyperliquid's HyperCore USDC page says the legacy bridge holds less than 10% of the USDC on HyperCore.

HLP as the backstop#

When a position falls below two thirds of its maintenance margin before the order book can close it, the liquidator vault, part of the HLP vault, takes it over, per Hyperliquid's liquidations docs. If an account still goes negative, auto-deleveraging closes profitable positions on the other side. HLP can lose money: after a large ETH long in March 2025, Hyperliquid said "there was no protocol exploit or hack," that HLP lost about $4 million over 24 hours, and that "HLP is not a risk-free strategy." Our guide to Hyperliquid vaults and HLP covers the vault's role and record.

Oracle and market incidents#

• JELLY, March 2025. After "suspicious market activity," Hyperliquid said the validator set voted to delist JELLY perps, and that all users apart from flagged addresses would be made whole by the Hyper Foundation. The episode showed validators can act as a group on a single market.
• SK Hynix, July 2026. On a HIP-3 market run by trade[XYZ], a one-share print about 30% below the prior close passed through the deployer's oracle. 960 long accounts were liquidated and auto-deleveraging closed $10.8 million of profitable shorts, according to Nexus Mutual's incident report. The report adds that a slashed HIP-3 stake is burned, not paid to affected traders.

Scams and impersonation#

Hyperliquid's support pages give specific scam warnings. The Hyperliquid support guide says support happens only in the ticket channel of Hyperliquid's Discord server, and that DMs "are from impersonator accounts." It warns that scammers use lookalike domains such as "hyperliguid.xyz" to get users to sign malicious transactions, and lists the official accounts: @HyperliquidX and @HyperFND on X, and the hyperliquid_announcements Telegram channel. Hyperliquid's page for hacked or scammed users says an unknown multi-sig on your account is a sign of a compromised key, warns about sponsored search links, and recommends a hardware wallet paired with a browser wallet.

Where Totalis stands#

Totalis, which publishes this guide, is an app for HIP-4 outcome markets and Combos built on Hyperliquid, and it sets its own access rules. On one point they are stricter than Hyperliquid's. The Totalis terms of service, last revised 30 April 2026, require that you are not a "U.S. Person", which they define to include any US citizen wherever they live, anyone physically in the US and US-organised entities. They also exclude any jurisdiction Totalis designates as restricted. The terms ban VPNs, proxies, remote desktop tools and other location masking, and let Totalis use "geolocation, wallet-screening, device-screening" checks and ask for identity, location or source-of-funds documents at any time. Totalis is also invite-only during its launch: a wallet with no account that no partner has admitted gets an ACCESS_REQUIRED error, per the guide to partner sign-in and wallet admission. Where those terms allow, you can trade in the Totalis app.

Frequently asked questions#

Is Hyperliquid a legitimate platform?#

Hyperliquid is a public blockchain with an onchain order book, and every trade on it is visible onchain. It is not licensed by any regulator, which its own terms state. Its main protocol risks are validator concentration, closed-source node software, oracle failures on builder-deployed markets and liquidation losses. Hyperliquid's support pages also warn about impersonators and lookalike domains.

Does Hyperliquid have an app?#

Yes. Hyperliquid's support guide lists the web app at app.hyperliquid.xyz and an Android app on Google Play. Its onboarding guide also names third-party apps that trade on Hyperliquid, including Dexari, MetaMask and Phantom. Each one applies its own country restrictions.

Will Hyperliquid require KYC for everyone?#

Nothing announced so far does that. Hyperliquid describes HIP-3* as optional and per deployer, with existing markets unchanged, and the planned KYC applies to the regulated US venues that choose to use it.