Coinbase brings Hyperliquid perps to Base, but not to the US

Coinbase added Hyperliquid perpetual futures to its Base App this week, Decrypt reported, giving eligible users access to more than 290 markets at leverage up to 50x directly inside the app. The rollout landed in the same week President Trump told reporters his CFTC chair was working to bring Hyperliquid fully onshore in the US, and the new integration still isn't available to users in the US, UK, or Canada.

That gap says something about where the regulatory line currently sits. Hyperliquid itself remains a platform Americans can't legally access, built around wallet-based perpetual futures trading that routes around the broker-dealer structure US derivatives rules assume. Coinbase, a US-listed and US-regulated exchange, can plug that trading into its own app for users outside its home market while staying on the sidelines for the market Trump's public remarks were aimed at opening up. HYPE and rival perps token LIT both jumped more than 20% on the day of those remarks, a reaction that had already priced in optimism the actual product rollout hasn't yet delivered on for US users.

• Markets available through the new Base App integration: 290+
• Maximum leverage offered: 50x
• Regions still excluded: US, UK, Canada
• Base's new accelerator, Batches 004: $1 million total, $100,000 per team
• Pre-seed teams funded by Batches 004: 10, building AI agents, payments, trading, and financing products

Coinbase's Base network paired the Hyperliquid integration with a separate push to grow its builder base. Base opened applications for Batches 004, a $1 million accelerator investing $100,000 each in 10 pre-seed teams working on AI agents, payments, trading, and financing products. Neither move requires the other to succeed, but together they read as Coinbase betting on Base as the on-ramp for both trading activity and the applications built around it, regardless of how fast Washington moves on the regulatory side.

Not every signal from the same week points one direction. VanEck flagged 8 of 12 Bitcoin capitulation indicators as active even as the broader market rallied on Trump's comments, noting that similar setups have historically produced below-average returns over the following 90 and 180 days. That caveat doesn't cancel out the bullish reaction in HYPE, LIT, or the rest of the market, but it's a reminder that a strong week of headlines and a strong multi-month trend aren't the same claim, and the two data points came from the same market on the same day.

For a US exchange, the calculation behind an integration like this is narrower than it looks. Coinbase doesn't need to solve Hyperliquid's US access problem to route its own users toward perp trading; it only needs a jurisdiction where that trading is already legal, and enough of Coinbase's user base sits outside the US, UK, and Canada to make the rollout worthwhile on its own. If Trump's CFTC push eventually produces an onshore path for Hyperliquid-style perps, Coinbase would already have the app, the user base, and the trading rails in place to extend the same product to American users without building anything new. The Base integration reads less like a hedge against Washington moving slowly and more like a head start for whenever it doesn't.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.