TLDR Tech / Crypto
How USDC Wins the Hyperliquid Deal
Coinbase acquired Native Markets, the team behind Hyperliquid's community-elected native stablecoin USDH, sunsetting the project and reinstalling USDC as the exchange's primary quote asset in exchange for routing 90% of stablecoin revenue back to Hyperliquid, roughly doubling what the exchange earned while $5.6B in bridged USDC generated ~$200M annually for Coinbase and Circle. The deal delivers USDC distribution on the largest onchain perpetuals venue, which holds 30% of total onchain perps market share, 46% of open interest, and runs at ~50% of Bybit's volume, while Hyperliquid gains improved economics and regulatory alignment. Tether is executing the same playbook: a $147.5M commitment to Drift Protocol's recovery after April's exploit installed USDT as Drift's settlement asset on Solana, where USDC previously held more than 2x USDT's stablecoin share. Despite USDC transaction volume hitting $355B in May and surpassing USDT for the first time, aggregate market share has barely moved (USDT: 67% to 67.3%, USDC: 27.6% to 28.1% year-over-year), which explains why both issuers are targeting embedded perps settlement positions rather than organic adoption.
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