Circle首席经济学家访谈：USDC入局Hyperliquid利好Circle与HYPE

Compiled & Translated: TechFlow

Guests: Gordon Liao (Chief Economist at Circle), Ram Ahluwalia (Co-founder & CEO of Lumida Wealth), Chris Perkins (Managing Partner at CoinFund)

Host: Austin Campbell

Original Title: The Fed, China, and CLARITY + Coinbase Eats USDH

Podcast Source: Unchained

Air Date: May 19, 2026

Editor's Note

In this episode, Circle Chief Economist Gordon Liao systematically explains for the first time the market structure logic behind USDH being replaced by USDC. USDC's balance on the Hyperliquid platform has doubled over the past year, with 90% of reserve yield flowing back to Hyperliquid for repurchasing HYPE. Coinbase serves as the treasury deployment partner, while Circle acts as the technical deployment partner and has staked 500,000 HYPE.

Gordon also decomposes long-end US Treasury yields. The current 30-year yield breaking through 5% is primarily driven by the term premium. Meanwhile, stablecoins are quietly becoming marginal buyers of US Treasuries. In Q1 2026, USDC's on-chain settlement volume alone reached $21 trillion. Stablecoins concentrated purchases of short-term Treasuries are effectively lowering the overall weighted duration of US government debt, potentially providing counterbalancing support for long-end rates.

Furthermore, the show discusses the bottlenecks of the CLARITY Act and the divergence of opinion on where AI value is captured following the OpenAI lawsuit.

Key Quotes

USDH Replaced by USDC

• "This is essentially a liquidity supernova event. As the dominant on-chain perpetual contract platform, the collateral assets it uses will radiate throughout the entire on-chain economy."
• "The governance vote eight or nine months ago chose a different reference asset. But as the platform grows and matures, it also needs to deal with more traditional institutions, and using high-quality, institutional-grade collateral assets is a key part of that."
• "Any place that can retain TVL – whether exchanges or prediction markets – will find a way to monetize this floating rate. Why should they give this money to a third party?"
• "For Coinbase and Circle, this is a strategic move to neutralize an emerging competitor. Coinbase, as the collateral manager, has inserted itself into a key node of this new infrastructure."

Multiple Facets of Stablecoins

• "Regarding whether stablecoins are a medium of exchange or a store of value, we see they can be multiple things simultaneously. In payment scenarios, they are a medium of exchange; in this scenario, they are a vehicle for capital liquidity and collateral liquidity. As the system scales and becomes more institutionalized, the latter will become increasingly important."
• "An Agent would probably want a money market fund that pays interest when idle. But the moment it initiates a payment, it would want that money packaged as a stablecoin. Just the compliance paperwork for paying with securities is unbearable."

OpenAI Case and AI Value Capture

• "There is almost no value capture at the LLM layer. These AI Labs spend tens of billions of dollars to provide free services for people like us; they are essentially performing a public service. The value of an LLM lies in its model weights – that's IP."
• "Whoever owns the end-user delivers the most value. Value primarily falls on the application layer, as well as cloud businesses and AI enablement service providers like Accenture. They will do well."
• "I think it's a barbell structure. Besides the distribution side, the other end is energy. Whoever can get nearly free energy and cheap compute wins. Elon has an advantage here."

On the CLARITY Act

• "The compromise between Thom Tillis and Angela Alsobrooks essentially separates the store of value, settlement, and unit of account functions of money."
• "We are approaching the Hillary's Step of this mountain (the last difficult climb before the summit of Everest). There are still the commissioner issue and the ethics issue, and the ethics hurdle will be very tough to pass."
• "I've felt since the beginning that the banking industry's fight in this battle was very quixotic. What exactly are you trying to get out of this? Are you just stabbing each other, or are you handing a big gift to asset management companies?"

Long-Term Treasuries and Interest Rates

• "Most of the upward momentum in the 30-year yield comes from the term premium, which is currently around 80 bps. This is quite high compared to two years ago when it was negative. It means the market reflects supply and demand dynamics, rather than expectations for future short-term rates."
• "The narrative that stablecoins are the marginal buyers of US Treasuries carries more weight than people give it credit for. Their duration is very short, concentrated in short-term Treasuries and reverse repos. This actually frees up space for the Treasury to issue more short-term debt, and when weighted by dollar duration, it effectively reduces the supply of long-term Treasuries in the market."
• "Investors are saying: I need more compensation to hedge against higher inflation risk. That's it. They know the Fed is not inclined to cut rates."

Coinbase and Circle Join Forces to Take USDH

Austin Campbell (Host): Hello everyone, welcome back to Bits + Bips, where we explore how crypto and macro collide, basis point by basis point. I'm your host, Austin Campbell. Our guests today include Ram Ahluwalia, Co-founder & CEO of Lumida Wealth; Chris Perkins, Managing Partner of CoinFund; and Gordon Liao, Chief Economist at Circle. There's a lot to discuss in the rates market and the news today, and I'm particularly looking forward to Gordon's perspective.

Let's start with Circle. Coinbase and Circle have essentially 'eaten' USDH. USDC will be crowned as the aligned quote asset for Hyperliquid (the on-chain perpetual DEX). Native Markets, which won the governance contest eight months ago, is now being acquired by Coinbase. Holders of USDH will redeem them for USDC during the migration period. Coinbase will become the official treasury/deployment partner for USDC on Hyperliquid. Circle will be responsible for the technical integration and operational infrastructure of USDC on Hyperliquid, and will stake 500,000 HYPE to move toward becoming a validator. 90% of the reserve yield will flow back to Hyperliquid, likely used for HYPE buybacks through the aid fund.

Roughly calculating, there is about $5 billion USDC on Hyperliquid now. At an interest rate of less than 4%, that's nearly $200 million annualized. Most of this money will flow to Hyperliquid, Coinbase takes a cut, and Circle gains a new deployment venue for USDC, continuing its pursuit of Tether's scale.

The bullish logic is that this leads to deeper order books, less swap slippage, faster on/off ramps, and better market maker support, tying HYPE closer to platform fees, staking, and Builder activity. Bitwise is also simultaneously filing for a spot HYPE ETF. On the bearish side, people like ZachXBT worry that if Hyperliquid's core collateral, quote asset, and liquidity become increasingly dependent on USDC, then the entire system hands a key vulnerability to Circle/Coinbase/regulatory mandates. There are also governance issues with Native Markets. Chris, as an investor in this space, what's your take?

Chris Perkins: I think this is one of a series of moves we will see, and the keyword is "Net Interest Income." Step back and look at the traditional exchange model: you earn face-value commissions, taking a cut from every transaction; clearing is usually not a profit center, although in our ecosystem it's become a new business line, sometimes earning a bit from data. But the real big money is in net interest income.

In traditional finance, the model is: clients give you dollars as collateral, you give the dollars to the clearinghouse, which invests them, keeps a large chunk, and returns a small portion to you. That's your net interest margin. This is a fundamental component of any exchange's business model. Many decentralized applications in the past ignored this, effectively giving away this beautiful revenue stream. Now they realize it and want to take it back.

I can tell you, any place that can retain TVL – exchanges, applications, prediction markets – will find a way to monetize this floating rate. Why should they give it to a third party?

From the exchange's perspective, this is bullish – Hyperliquid's price went up after the news because this "Circle" (pun intended) is complete. You've solved the net interest income problem, returning value to token holders. From Circle/Coinbase's side, you are also winners – the details are in the contract terms, like the lock-up period and how often the rate is renegotiated, but what you get is a ubiquitous stablecoin. USDC is fungible; the more it circulates, the higher the likelihood end-users accept it as a payment method.

So USDC wins too. Perhaps both parties will renegotiate the economic terms in the future. Hyperliquid is a big winner, having secured net interest income; Circle gets greater adoption, scale, distribution, and hopefully incremental utility. I see this as a win-win.

Austin Campbell: Gordon, I'd like to toss the ball to you. I know Circle well myself. USDC has many different facets in the current market. From a market structure perspective, Americans are used to seeing money as layered – the money you use to buy coffee and the money you use to settle derivatives are not the same thing. But now we start to see USDC being used for many things simultaneously, with its fungibility increasing. How do you view this from Circle's perspective? And more broadly, with your economics background, how do you see the market structure?

Gordon Liao: A few observations. First, we are witnessing the overall maturation of infrastructure. Hyperliquid is the dominant on-chain perp platform today, and its scale has grown significantly. USDC balances on this platform have roughly doubled year-over-year.

The governance vote eight or nine months ago did choose a different reference asset. But as the platform grows and matures, it also needs to interact with more traditional institutions, and using high-quality, institutional-grade collateral assets is a key part of that. Choosing USDC is a recognition of its underlying security and its commitment to 1:1 reserves.

As Chris said, this is a win-win, and also a liquidity supernova event. As the dominant on-chain perp platform, the collateral asset it uses will radiate throughout the entire on-chain economy. So it's a major liquidity event that will encourage the use of USDC and other associated infrastructure.

We deployed USDC to Hyperliquid last September, along with CCTP (Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol). So it's been there for a while, but this is a great "re-affirmation" event.

Regarding whether stablecoins are a medium of exchange or a store of value, we see they can be multiple things simultaneously. In some scenarios, they are a medium of exchange for payments; in others, they are a vehicle for capital liquidity and collateral liquidity. As the system scales and becomes more institutionalized, the latter will become increasingly important.

Similar trends are evident in settlement volumes. Our recent earnings report disclosed Q1 on-chain settlement volume for USDC at $21 trillion. This reflects the expansion of infrastructure and improving liquidity on the largest platforms – both centralized and decentralized.

Austin Campbell: Following this line, the circulation of USDC is actually highly tied to Coinbase. Many of Coinbase's products, like debit cards, credit card payments, and corporate payments, are based on USDC. Now we are also using it as the core asset for exchanges like Hyperliquid. Ram, from a market perspective, does this make you more bullish or bearish on Coinbase and Circle's stock?

Ram Ahluwalia: It's good for everyone, especially favorable for Hyperliquid. For Coinbase and Circle, they have successfully neutralized an emerging competitor. Coinbase, as the collateral manager, has inserted itself into a key node of the new infrastructure. This is a very strategic move.

For Hyperliquid, retaining 90% of the income is a reward for its achievements over the past few years. We discussed Hyperliquid three or four weeks ago; it's one of the assets you want to hold this cycle. Coinbase's preemptive move was very forward-looking because Hyperliquid is becoming the core of decentralized trading venues. Circle has secured a substantial stream of recurring net interest income. So it's a win for everyone, with particularly great benefits for Hyperliquid.

This also ties back to another topic we discussed before: distribution will ultimately drive most of the gains in this system. Gordon, you also said Hyperliquid is the emerging perp DEX in crypto. All these parties coming together essentially recognize the position of distribution and users. This theme will reappear repeatedly when judging winners and losers down the line.

The OpenAI Lawsuit

Austin Campbell: Speaking of users and winners, today Elon Musk lost and Sam Altman won, at least the first round. A federal jury in Oakland unanimously dismissed all of Musk's claims in less than two hours. The core of the ruling was the three-year statute of limitations. The jury believed Musk knew in 2021 that OpenAI was transitioning to a for-profit model, but he didn't sue until February 2024.

He had originally sought $134 billion in "ill-gotten gains" and the removal of Altman and Brockman from leadership, based on the 2025 for-profit restructuring. However, the substantive issues of the case, including charitable trust breach and unjust enrichment, were not ruled upon. Musk's team has already indicated they will appeal. Wired magazine commented that during the trial, both sides portrayed the other as self-interested, and neither Musk nor Altman came out looking good. Subsequent analysis suggests that, at least for the transition period, OpenAI might be able to proceed with an IPO.

There are a few reactions on X worth reading. Structural skeptics say this is a legal win for OpenAI, but the bigger political and institutional questions remain: what does it mean when an organization builds public legitimacy with a 'non-profit, humanity-first' mission and then becomes one of the most valuable commercial platforms in the world? News24 says a non-profit machine built for the benefit of humanity has been forcibly steered towards a closed, Microsoft-supported for-profit machine. The trial indeed revealed the breaking of promises around openness and safety. Chris, what's your view?

Chris Perkins: It looks like the statute of limitations was exceeded, which is quite clear-cut. I don't know how Musk's lawyers will appeal, but they are smart and will surely find a way.

At this point, Ram usually says something negative about OpenAI, calling it a tempest in a teapot. Before he speaks, the bigger issue in the crypto space is that, due to regulatory pressures over the past four years, many foundations are designed as non-profits, alongside Labs. I hope for a clear legal precedent to sort out the relationship between foundations and Labs. Right now, in many protocols, people are confused about who is responsible for what and who is who.

I'm not saying foundations are useless; foundations absolutely have a non-profit ideal to promote, like Ethereum's cryptography research. But the motivation for establishing many foundations might have been to seek protection from a very aggressive regulator. So this case will have far-reaching implications for the crypto space. Sam is also increasingly involved in this ecosystem.

Ram Ahluwalia: Chris, you are practically