Coinbase expands into Hyperliquid with USDC deal, USDH brand assets takeover

Coinbase unveiled big plans earlier today when it revealed that it will take over as the official treasury deployer of USDC stablecoins on the Hyperliquid network. The same announcement disclosed that the largest crypto exchange in the U.S. will purchase USDH brand assets from Native Markets.

With that deal, Coinbase will now be taking over the largest and third-largest stablecoin facilities operating on Hyperliquid L1, consolidating stablecoin liquidity on the trading network around a single USDC dollar token.

Why did Coinbase become the native stablecoin issuer for Hyperliquid?

Per the May 14 announcement, Coinbase’s USDC has become the sole Aligned Quote Asset (AQA) on Hyperliquid, a framework that determines which stablecoin underpins trading on the platform.

Native Markets originally pioneered the AQA concept when it won a hotly contested race to become the issuer of the USDH stablecoin on Hyperliquid through a community governance vote in September 2025, according to previous Cryptopolitan reporting.

Coinbase said in its blog post that USDH markets will wind down over time, even though they remain functional for now. During the transition period, USDH holders can convert to USDC or redeem for fiat at zero fees through the Native Markets-operated USDH Dashboard.

As for the logic of making the deal, the size gap and active market on Hyperliquid answer that question. Hyperliquid processed over $176 billion in perps volume over the last 30 days.

USDC on Hyperliquid has grown to roughly $5 billion in total value, doubling year over year, according to Coinbase and confirmed by DeFiLlama data. USDH, by contrast, has a market cap at approximately $101.75 million, after reaching the $100 million circulating supply milestone on April 23, 2026.

The Coinbase deal adds Circle, the much larger issuer into the mix, with its USDC token having deeper liquidity and broader fiat on-ramps, which reduces friction for traders who otherwise need to swap between dollar tokens before moving funds off-chain.

Why did Native Markets make the deal with Coinbase?

Mary-Catherine Lader, posting on X on behalf of Native Markets, characterized the transition as proof that the original USDH thesis worked. “When Native Markets secured the right to deploy USDH eight months ago, we had a simple thesis: people care about stablecoins that deliver value to the networks and their users,” Lader wrote. She described Coinbase deploying native USDC as an AQA that shares revenue with the network as “a validation of that thesis.”

Native Markets won the USDH ticker in September 2025 after a competitive process that drew proposals from Paxos, Frax Finance, Sky, Agora, Ethena, and several others, as Cryptopolitan reported at the time.

The company built out USDH as a fiat-backed stablecoin reserved by cash, short-term U.S. Treasuries, repo agreements, and tokenized treasury products, including BlackRock’s BUIDL and Superstate’s USTB, according to DeFiLlama.

Coinbase is expanding into Hyperliquid 

Coinbase framed the move as part of its push to make USDC the default settlement layer for on-chain capital markets. “As 24/7 onchain capital markets grow, concentrating liquidity with USDC improves market efficiency and allows capital to flow freely with fewer conversions,” the company wrote.

The timing aligns with a period of expansion for Hyperliquid. The platform launched HIP-4 prediction markets in early May 2026, trading 6.05 million contracts on its first day, according to Cryptopolitan coverage. Hyperliquid’s user base has grown to 1.19 million wallets, and the network has been adding new trading verticals including commodities and equities through its HIP-3 framework.

All prediction market settlements on Hyperliquid currently use USDH, per Cryptopolitan’s HIP-4 reporting. The transition to USDC as the primary AQA will eventually affect how those settlements work, though neither Coinbase nor Native Markets specified a timeline for full migration.