Pump.fun Launches Perpetual Futures With Up to 40x BTC and 25x ETH Leverage on Hyperliquid

Published October 17, 2026, 10:37 PKT. Based on Crypto Briefing's October 16, 2026 report on the launch (primary source), secondary reporting by Crypto-Economy and KuCoin News, and a TronWeekly report embedding the announcement post.

Pump.fun, the Solana platform built as a memecoin launchpad, announced on October 16 that it is adding perpetual futures trading powered by Hyperliquid's HyperCore engine. The announcement came through a post on X, and API data shared around October 9, 2026 already showed the platform pulling funding rates and open interest for BTC and ETH perpetuals directly from Hyperliquid's HyperCore mainnet, Crypto Briefing reported. The leverage on offer is substantial: traders can access up to 40x margin on Bitcoin and 25x on Ethereum, according to the research findings.

The 40x BTC and 25x ETH contracts

Perpetual futures let traders bet on an asset's price without owning it and with no expiration date, and HyperCore handles order matching, margin balances, funding payments and liquidations for trades originating through Pump.fun, KuCoin News reported. The funding rate is a periodic payment between long and short traders that keeps the contract price tethered to the real market price, while open interest measures how many contracts remain open, Crypto Briefing reported. Both figures are being sourced from HyperCore, Hyperliquid's core trading layer, and the launch follows technical signals spotted in Pump.fun's application programming interface on October 9, when developers identified perpetual futures data, including funding rates, open interest and trading volumes, coming from HyperCore, according to KuCoin News.

No derivatives engine of its own

Rather than building its own derivatives engine from scratch, Pump.fun is borrowing Hyperliquid's order book and liquidity, Crypto Briefing reported. That is the liquidity pool Pump.fun users will effectively be tapping: Hyperliquid's perpetual market recorded $12.43 billion in daily trading volume in late August 2026. The October launch builds on an earlier integration, because on August 26, 2026, Pump.fun added support for HyperEVM, Hyperliquid's smart contract environment, enabling USDC-denominated spot trading with near-zero fees, according to the same report. Crypto-Economy described the futures integration as the most aggressive modification applied to the platform's original offering and the beginning of a more complex operational phase in its business model.

From memecoin factory to derivatives venue

Pump.fun launched in January 2024 as a memecoin launchpad and became a central hub in the memecoin sector, and by early October 2026 it had surpassed Hyperliquid in 30-day revenue, Crypto Briefing reported. That fee yield came primarily from the original launch mechanism, and analysts cited by Crypto-Economy said the steady cash inflow gives management the financial muscle to fund the foray into futures. The move is not without precedent: rival platform FOMO introduced Hyperliquid-based perpetuals trading in June 2026, broadening the range of assets its users could trade, so Pump.fun is entering a lane a competitor already occupies. The pattern points to a bigger role for Hyperliquid as backend infrastructure for consumer-facing crypto apps, Crypto Briefing noted, with FOMO using it and Pump.fun now using it for both spot and perpetuals.

The risk: 40x leverage and single-provider concentration

Leverage of 40x on BTC and 25x on ETH can turn modest price swings into total losses, Crypto Briefing warned. Fund liquidation under the automated scheme executes the irreversible sale of collateral assets when price fluctuations push a position below the user's maintenance margin, and independent technical analysts cited by Crypto-Economy warned that constant exposure to that degree of leverage presents an extreme risk factor for retail traders. There is also concentration risk at the infrastructure level: multiple consumer platforms now rely on HyperCore for pricing and execution, so any disruption on Hyperliquid could ripple across all of them at once, Crypto Briefing noted. The next revenue update, scheduled for the first days of November 2026, will give the first quantifiable accounting of what the futures integration is actually worth to the platform, according to Crypto-Economy.

This article is news reporting and is not investment advice.

Sources

• Crypto Briefing, October 16, 2026, primary source for the X announcement of perpetual futures trading powered by Hyperliquid, the API data shared around October 9 showing funding rates and open interest for BTC and ETH perpetuals pulled from HyperCore, the 40x BTC and 25x ETH leverage figures, the August 26 HyperEVM integration with USDC-denominated spot trading at near-zero fees, Hyperliquid's $12.43 billion in daily perpetual volume in late August 2026, Pump.fun's 30-day revenue surpassing Hyperliquid by early October 2026, the January 2024 memecoin-launchpad origin, FOMO's June 2026 Hyperliquid-based perpetuals launch, and the leverage and concentration risks
• Crypto-Economy, October 17, 2026, secondary source confirming the October 16 announcement via X, the 40x Bitcoin and 25x Ethereum leverage specifications, the liquidation mechanics, the August 26 HyperEVM integration framing, the early-October revenue comparison, and the November 2026 revenue update
• KuCoin News, secondary source confirming the launch, the eligible-trader framing, the October 9 API findings, and HyperCore's role in order matching, margin balances, funding payments and liquidations
• TronWeekly, secondary source confirming the launch and embedding the October 16 announcement post