Hyperliquid Strategies (NASDAQ: PURR), a public company that holds Hyperliquid’s HYPE token as its main treasury asset, reported $620.6 million in net income for the quarter ended Sept. 30, almost all of it from paper gains on its tokens. It also said a subsidiary has applied to become a futures commission merchant, the kind of firm that holds customer accounts for U.S. futures trading.

“Those two moves are the same bet,” CEO David Schamis said in the company’s earnings release, referring to the token purchases and the application. In his telling, owning HYPE captures the protocol’s economics, while the broker arm would help bring markets built on Hyperliquid onshore.

That second plan lands in a market that Lorenzo Valente, ARK Invest’s director of research for digital assets, expects to fill up. “I think perps [are] gonna get very, very competitive,” Valente said on Unchained in October, adding that “Coinbase, Robinhood, you know, the Backpacks of the world, they’re all gonna compete there.” Valente, who agreed Hyperliquid is “the darling” among protocols that buy back their own tokens, said buybacks were not the best use of that value.

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Paper Gains Drive the Quarter

The profit rested on $803.0 million in net unrealized gains on HYPE, marked at the token’s Sept. 30 price of $90.99. The company set aside $172.3 million for income taxes and recorded $15.3 million in mostly non-cash costs tied to its equity facility. Staking revenue and validator commissions brought in $12.3 million.

Hyperliquid Strategies raised $911 million by selling stock during the quarter and put $802 million to work. Of that, $785 million bought 9.1 million HYPE, which works out to about $86 a token, taking the treasury from 29.3 million tokens at the end of June to 38.5 million at the end of September. The rest, $17 million, went to buying back 2.7 million PURR shares. The company reported $254.6 million in cash and cash-like holdings and no debt.

The Broker Application

Hyperliquid plans optional additions to HIP-3, its existing system for third-party markets, that would let operators launch permissioned markets on the chain. If regulators sign off, the subsidiary would hold U.S. client accounts for those markets, giving American customers a regulated route to perpetual futures. The company cautioned it cannot predict when, or whether, the application will be approved.

Two other firms are working on similar routes. Payward, Kraken’s parent, aims to be the first CFTC-regulated firm to run Hyperliquid markets with the exchange’s new access controls, through its Bitnomial exchange and NinjaTrader Clearing. Trade.xyz said Intercontinental Exchange, the New York Stock Exchange’s owner, is investing in it to offer U.S. traders round-the-clock perps built on Hyperliquid. Both plans still need CFTC approval.

Related Listen: Why ICE Wants to Run Hyperliquid-Based Perps in the US