Coinbase buys USDH brand, becomes Hyperliquid USDC deployer

Native Markets announced on May 14, 2026 that it sold the USDH brand assets to Coinbase and that Coinbase will act as Hyperliquid’s USDC treasury deployer under the platform’s upgraded AQAv2 framework. The agreement removes USDH as Hyperliquid’s primary quote asset and introduces a revenue-sharing arrangement on reserve yield.

Native Markets confirmed the sale covers brand assets only and that the company will remain independent. Native Markets co-founder Mary-Catherine Lader wrote on social media that the outcome validates the original USDH thesis: “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.”

USDH launched eight months earlier after Hyperliquid validators selected Native Markets to implement an “Aligned Quote Asset” model designed to capture reserve yield and route it into trading incentives and an Assistance Fund that supports HYPE buybacks and ecosystem growth. Hyperliquid’s USDC balances are roughly $5.5 billion, which generate about $220 million a year in reserve yield for Circle. USDH operations were estimated to capture roughly $110 million of that amount before the sale.

Hyperliquid and Coinbase will coordinate a gradual migration of markets and liquidity. Native Markets said USDH will remain fully backed during the transition and that holders can continue redeeming tokens through the official dashboard, with feeless conversions into USDC or fiat. The teams plan to support USDH/USDC trading pairs while timelines for shifting spot and perpetual liquidity to USDC-denominated markets are finalized.

Under AQAv2, Coinbase will manage the on-chain reserve and remit the majority of reserve yield revenue to Hyperliquid. Exact details of the revenue share and the operational schedule for the migration have not been disclosed.

Community reaction was mixed. Some users expressed concern about a major centralized exchange handling a stablecoin initiative that began as a decentralized project, while others described the arrangement as a consolidation of reserve revenue into the protocol. Hyperliquid’s HYPE token traded up about 3% at roughly $40.11 at the time of reporting.

Developers, investors and market participants are monitoring the rollout to see how AQAv2 operates in practice and whether similar treasury-deployer and revenue-sharing arrangements appear in other decentralized ecosystems.