USDC 반격 USDT, 진짜 전장은 Hyperliquid

Original title: How USDC Wins the Hyperliquid Deal

Original author: David Christopher

Translation: Peggy

Editor's note: The stablecoin competition is shifting from "who is more compliant" to "who can secure the most trading on-ramps."

After the passage of the GENIUS Act, USDC has indeed gained new growth momentum. Circle's U.S. roots and compliance advantages have allowed USDC to catch up with and even temporarily surpass USDT in terms of trading volume. However, from a market share perspective, the landscape has not changed significantly: USDT still holds the majority of the stablecoin market and maintains a strong position outside the U.S.

This is also the core significance of the deal between Coinbase, Circle, and Hyperliquid. On the surface, it is a stablecoin asset swap: USDC regains its status as the primary quote asset on Hyperliquid, and Hyperliquid receives a higher revenue share. But at a deeper level, it is a battle for distribution channels.

Hyperliquid is a core platform in the on-chain perpetual contract market, and perpetual contracts inherently depend on stablecoins as quote and settlement assets. Whoever becomes the primary quote asset in these markets will secure long-term use cases stemming from higher trading volume, margin deposits, deposits/withdrawals, and on-chain activity. Tether has proven this path through Binance; USDT's strength comes not just from its issuance scale but also from being deeply embedded in the global trading system.

For Coinbase and Circle, Hyperliquid provides a global reach that is difficult for them to replicate independently. Coinbase is constrained by regulations and cannot cover as broad a market as Binance or Hyperliquid. Therefore, embedding USDC into Hyperliquid's trading infrastructure may be a realistic path to counter USDT's network effects.

The most noteworthy aspect of this article is not whether Coinbase is making concessions or how much revenue share Hyperliquid gets, but that USDC is attempting to transition from a "U.S.-compliant stablecoin" to a broader "on-chain base trading currency." As perpetual contracts continue to grow, the main battlefield of the stablecoin war is likely to increasingly concentrate on these high-frequency trading scenarios.

Here is the original text:

Tether still dominates Binance, but Coinbase has just reinstalled USDC into Hyperliquid. The battle for stablecoin distribution channels is intensifying.

Hyperliquid is becoming one of the most contested assets in the crypto industry right now. Last week, spot HYPE ETFs from 21Shares and Bitwise went live on U.S. trading platforms, with Grayscale and VanEck following suit. Behind the rush of institutional capital is a longer-running competition: who gets a share of this platform's economic returns?

Last autumn, Hyperliquid launched a public RFP for its native stablecoin, USDH, aiming to recapture the revenue that was flowing to Coinbase and Circle. At the time, approximately $5.6 billion USDC was sitting in Hyperliquid's cross-chain bridge, generating around $200 million in annual interest income, but these profits were flowing to its centralized competitors. The platform generating the actual demand was not benefiting. Ultimately, Native Markets won the bid against Paxos, Ethena, and others in a community vote, leading to the launch of USDH.

Bankless previously covered Hyperliquid's bidding war surrounding USDH.

But just last week, Native Markets sold USDH to Coinbase and agreed to gradually phase out this stablecoin tied to Hyperliquid's interests, allowing USDC to once again become the primary quote asset on the platform. In exchange, 90% of the related revenue will flow back to Hyperliquid, although the specific revenue capture mechanism remains unclear. This deal has been widely interpreted as a victory for Hyperliquid, with the cost borne by Coinbase and Circle. This interpretation is understandable, but not entirely accurate.

What Hyperliquid gets from this deal is clear: a significantly improved revenue share, roughly double that of the USDH model; stronger regulatory resources through an alliance with one of the most influential American voices in the crypto industry in Washington; and a return to the stablecoin experience that the platform was originally built around and that users highly trust. Especially in the HIP-3 market, which has drawn significant attention to Hyperliquid over the past six months or so, USDC remains the primary asset used.

From Coinbase and Circle's perspective, the deal is mostly seen as a public relations win: forging a closer relationship with one of the most crypto-native and successful projects of the last cycle. But if you look at USDC's current market position alongside the growth trajectory of the perpetual contract market, another beneficiary emerges.

What Coinbase and Circle truly obtained is a distribution channel for USDC. And this scalable distribution may be more important than any other aspect of the deal.

Home Field Performance?

Since the passage of the GENIUS Act, USDC has indeed shown strong growth momentum. Circle was already prepared for the new environment shaped by this regulatory framework: USDC is headquartered in the U.S. and has always been compliance-oriented. This positioning has translated into actual trading volume.

Allium data shows that in May 2026, USDC trading volume reached $355 billion, surpassing USDT for the first time in recent months, reflecting accelerated growth since the GENIUS Act was passed in July last year.

However, the structural landscape of the stablecoin market has not changed.

In April 2025, just before the GENIUS Act passed, USDT held 67% of the stablecoin market, and USDC held 27.6%. One year later, USDT's share was 67.3%, and USDC's was 28.1%. The change was merely half a percentage point. In other words, despite USDC's accelerating trading volume, its supply share has barely moved.

An Artemis report from October last year indicated that the U.S. is USDC's strongest market. Given the correlation between USDC growth after the GENIUS Act and the U.S. regulatory environment, it's relatively safe to conclude that the U.S. is also the primary source of USDC's growth.

But the problem is precisely that the U.S. is also the market where new competitors are most concentratedly entering. Stripe has clearly entered the stablecoin business through Tempo and other acquisitions; major financial institutions are also launching their own domestic stablecoins compliant with the GENIUS Act. They are all encroaching on USDC's core market.

If the squeeze in the U.S. home market intensifies, USDC lacks a sufficiently solid international foundation to fall back on. In almost all markets outside the U.S., USDT remains the default dollar stablecoin, widely used for savings, investment, and trading, and it continues to expand aggressively. Over the past year, several new blockchains were launched specifically to expand USDT distribution; meanwhile, Tether also launched USAT, attempting to enter within U.S. regulatory boundaries under the GENIUS Act framework, directly challenging USDC's home market.

Coinbase and Circle now have momentum for continued expansion, but the window to lock in distribution channels before competition fully heats up is not wide. Trading venues, especially the perpetual contract market, are the most suitable battleground for capturing this distribution on-ramp.

Bankless previously reported on Tether's launch of the U.S.-regulated USA₮ stablecoin.

Perpetual Contracts Are the Real Battleground

Like stablecoins, perpetual contracts are one of the fastest-growing categories in crypto, consistently posting double-digit or even triple-digit year-over-year growth.

Perpetual contracts and stablecoins are structurally highly intertwined because stablecoins are typically the primary quote asset in perpetual contract markets. USDT has already established a significant foothold in this area: on Binance, the world's largest perpetual contract exchange, most trading pairs use USDT as the primary quote asset. Users trading Binance's core markets mainly transact using USDT. This further solidifies USDT's supply within the exchange and naturally creates downstream pull effects on deposits, withdrawals, and on-chain activity related to the platform.

Although Hyperliquid's trading volume is far lower than Binance's, it is already the largest on-chain perpetual contract platform, holding a 30% share of the entire on-chain perpetual contract market and 46% of open interest. This position has remained stable despite repeated competitive challenges.

Meanwhile, while Hyperliquid is not a centralized exchange, it has clearly demonstrated the ability to compete head-to-head with centralized platforms. As of April 30, its trading volume was approximately 50% of Bybit's, 30% of OKX's, and 79% of Coinbase International's. All of this combined amounts to only about 13% of Binance's volume. But the key point is that this number is still growing, and the growth curve points in only one direction.

Although still in its early stages, Hyperliquid's dominance in the on-chain perpetual contract market and its ability to match or even sometimes exceed centralized exchange volumes give it a global reach comparable to Binance's coverage outside the U.S. This opens up a new channel for Coinbase and Circle: they can leverage Hyperliquid to compete with Tether and transform it into a structural distribution channel for USDC.

Coinbase Chooses Its Battlefield

However, this raises the question: why doesn't Coinbase simply develop its own perpetual contract business further and build this distribution channel itself?

The reason is that Coinbase, constrained by its regulatory framework, is limited in both the customer base it can serve and the number of markets it can list. Currently, Coinbase covers about 100 countries, slightly more than half of Binance's coverage of 180 countries. Hyperliquid, benefiting from a more "relaxed" operational environment, can reach a broader set of markets, giving it an advantage over both Binance and Coinbase—an advantage Coinbase would find hard to replicate on its own.

Therefore, Coinbase and Circle are choosing to let Hyperliquid play the role of global reach, with USDC entering these markets as the underlying asset. This deal allows them to share in the upside through increased USDC supply and the resulting revenue, without having to personally engage in a likely unwinnable jurisdictional battle. They obtain only a portion of the economic benefits, but this is a scale that Coinbase cannot reach on its own.

Tether Is Copying the Same Playbook

Tether is working on its own version, albeit on a much smaller scale. After the Drift exploit in April, Tether pledged up to $147.5 million to support its recovery. This deal made USDT the settlement asset for Drift, established Tether-backed USDT lines for designated market makers, and funded the trading incentive layer.

In other words, Tether leveraged Drift's crisis to change the base currency of a major Solana perpetual contract DEX. Before this deal, USDC's stablecoin presence on Solana was more than double that of USDT, a pattern prevalent across the entire Solana chain.

Both sides of the stablecoin war have realized the same thing: the perpetual contract market is a key battlefield in the stablecoin competition.

Overall, to capitalize on the growth momentum from the GENIUS Act, Coinbase and Circle need more distribution channels. The Hyperliquid deal might be just such an on-ramp: spreading USDC into the core scenarios of on-chain trading, entering one of the fastest-growing categories in crypto, and gaining the possibility of competing with USDT and Binance on an equal scale.

It could also be a bet on further liberalization of U.S. regulatory boundaries. CFTC Chairman Selig has clearly stated his desire for perpetual contracts to be allowed for trading in the U.S., and the passage of the CLARITY Act could ensure this. This week, reports indicated that the SEC is preparing to introduce an "innovation exemption" under its Project Crypto initiative, allowing crypto-native platforms to offer on-chain trading of tokenized U.S. stocks under lighter registration requirements.

Combined with the stance of the CFTC under Selig and the regulatory direction of the SEC under Atkins, Coinbase seems to be positioning itself early: enabling Hyperliquid to gain distribution capabilities in the U.S. market, with USDC already installed as the core asset.

Bankless previously reported that perpetual contract trading is entering its window of opportunity.

Of course, the above is still speculative. But it aligns with how Wall Street and institutional players might view Hyperliquid: as their entry point into the future perpetual contract regulatory framework. For an asset, this is arguably one of the most attractive tailwinds possible.

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