Coinbase Named Hyperliquid's Official USDC Treasury Deployer as Native Stablecoin USDH Shuts Down
The Block reported on May 14, 2026, that Coinbase has been appointed the official USDC treasury deployer for Hyperliquid, the dominant decentralized on-chain perpetuals exchange. The arrangement coincides with the shutdown of USDH, the platform's short-lived native stablecoin, whose issuer Native Markets has agreed to grant Coinbase the right to purchase USDH brand assets as part of the deal. Neither Coinbase nor Native Markets has publicly confirmed the specific deal terms as of publication, and the core claims rest solely on The Block's reporting.
The move consolidates Coinbase's already substantial position in the USDC economy. Under its existing revenue-sharing agreement with Circle, the company that issues USDC, Coinbase collects roughly 50% of Circle's USDC reserve revenue generated off-platform, meaning revenue on USDC not held on Coinbase's own exchange. Coin Metrics has estimated Coinbase's effective 2024 share at approximately 56% of that reserve revenue; the 50% figure reflects the contractual rate. That arrangement earned Coinbase more than $900 million in 2024 alone.
Hyperliquid has processed more than $67 billion in cumulative trading volume and held over $597 million in total value locked as of early 2026. The platform currently holds approximately $5.5 to $5.6 billion in USDC deposits, representing about 7.5% of USDC's total circulating supply. Analysts have estimated that position generates between $150 million and $220 million in annual yield, though that estimate reflects a specific rate environment at the time of calculation and should be treated as directional rather than a precise current figure.
The irony is significant. When Hyperliquid validators selected Native Markets to build USDH in September 2025, the company's core pitch was straightforward: reclaim the yield that Coinbase was collecting from USDC sitting on Hyperliquid. The Native Markets proposal stated explicitly that USDH would "bring back home, to the Hyperliquid ecosystem, the current yield earned by Coinbase for every unit of USDC on Hyperliquid." Notably, Native Markets won that governance vote despite offering less favorable revenue sharing than every competing proposal. Rival bids from Paxos, Ethena, Frax, Sky, and Agora proposed returning 95 to 100% of reserve revenue to the ecosystem; Native Markets proposed a 50/50 split. The ecosystem-alignment thesis that carried the vote despite that tradeoff has now fully collapsed. That plan lasted roughly eight months. Coinbase now holds an official role in the very infrastructure USDH was designed to counter.
USDH launched on September 24, 2025, after Hyperliquid validators chose Native Markets over that competitive field. The stablecoin backed its reserves through BlackRock-managed US Treasuries and Superstate for on-chain holdings, with custody at JPMorgan Chase and Fireblocks. Reserve yield was directed toward buying back HYPE, Hyperliquid's native token, through the platform's Assistance Fund. The precise allocation, however, was disputed: the initial Native Markets proposal described a 50/50 split between the ecosystem and the issuer, while the official USDH website stated that 100% of reserve yield went to buybacks. That discrepancy was never publicly resolved.
Native Markets was co-founded by Max Fiege, an early Hyperliquid investor; Anish Agnihotri, a blockchain researcher with stints at Paradigm, Ritual, and Polychain; and MC Lader, the former President and COO of Uniswap Labs and former head of BlackRock's digital assets division.
Circle did not stand still during this period. Two days before USDH launched, Circle activated native USDC and its cross-chain transfer protocol (CCTP V2) on HyperEVM, Hyperliquid's Ethereum-compatible smart contract layer. That deployment allowed users to move USDC directly between Hyperliquid and more than twelve other blockchains without relying on third-party bridges, which carry additional technical and custody risk. Circle also acquired HYPE tokens and began evaluating whether to operate as a Hyperliquid validator, deepening its commitment to the ecosystem at the same time USDH was trying to establish itself.
Separately, the US GENIUS Act, which passed the Senate in June 2025 and prohibited interest payments on stablecoins, may have added further pressure on yield-sharing models like the one USDH had built its case around, though analysts differ on how directly the legislation affected Native Markets' competitive position.
For users outside the United States, this outcome has concrete implications.
Africa leads the world in stablecoin adoption relative to its crypto-active population, with 79% of users holding stablecoins, compared to a global average of roughly 60% and approximately 45% in high-income markets. In Nigeria, surveys show that 95% of respondents prefer receiving payments in stablecoins over the local naira. USDC is a primary dollar-access tool across Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and Egypt. The pressures driving that adoption differ by country: Nigeria has faced persistent naira devaluation and foreign exchange controls; Egypt has contended with acute dollar shortages; Ghana experienced a currency collapse linked to its 2022 debt crisis. In each case, users have turned to dollar-denominated stablecoins as a practical hedge against local currency risk.
The consolidation of Hyperliquid's stablecoin infrastructure around USDC, backed by Circle and Coinbase's institutional resources, reinforces that instrument's reliability as a settlement layer. The tradeoff is that yield generated from capital deposited by users in these markets will continue flowing to a US-headquartered company rather than back into the on-chain ecosystem through HYPE buybacks, as USDH intended.
In South Asia, developers building on HyperEVM have been among those using cross-chain USDC flows from Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, and Polygon. CCTP V2's already-active integration simplifies the technical picture for that use case. Circle Mint access, which allows eligible institutions to create and redeem USDC at a 1:1 ratio, is now available natively on HyperEVM, which matters for fintech builders in those markets seeking cost-efficient stablecoin infrastructure.
For HYPE holders specifically, the USDH sunset removes the yield-to-ecosystem mechanism that had been a selling point of the original stablecoin governance vote. Whether Hyperliquid pursues another native stablecoin initiative, or leans fully into the Circle and Coinbase infrastructure now in place, will likely be among the central questions analysts and HYPE holders return to as the ecosystem moves into the second half of the year.