[DigitalToday reporter Yoonseo Lee] Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase will take on the role of official reserve deployer for the stablecoin USDC on the Hyperliquid network and has acquired the USDH brand assets of Native Market.

Cryptopolitan, a blockchain media outlet, reported on May 14 that the deal will reorganise Hyperliquid’s stablecoin liquidity around a single USDC token.

At the core is a change to Hyperliquid’s aligned quote asset (AQA) system. AQA is the structure that sets the base stablecoin underpinning trading on the platform. USDC has now become the only AQA. Coinbase will also take over the largest and third-largest stablecoin facilities that had been operating on Hyperliquid.

As a result, the USDH market will be phased down. During the conversion period, USDH holders can swap into USDC without fees or redeem into fiat currency via a dashboard operated by Native Market. Hyperliquid currently uses USDH for settlement in prediction markets, but a shift to a USDC-centred system could also bring changes to that settlement method. Coinbase and Native Market did not disclose the overall migration schedule.

The background to the reorganisation is a gap in trading volume and liquidity within Hyperliquid. Hyperliquid processed $176 billion in perpetual futures trading volume over the past 30 days. By Coinbase and DefiLlama estimates, the total value locked in USDC on Hyperliquid is about $5 billion, doubling over the past year. By contrast, USDH has a market capitalisation of about $101.75 million. USDH surpassed $100 million in circulating supply on April 23, but remains far smaller than USDC.

Coinbase presented the move as part of a strategy to expand USDC as the base settlement layer for onchain capital markets. It said concentrating liquidity in USDC can increase market efficiency and reduce the inconvenience for traders of having to switch dollar-pegged tokens and then move funds off-chain.

Native Market described the deal as an extension of its strategy. Mary-Katherine Lader wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that investors’ demand had been confirmed for stablecoins that return value to the network and users.

The company was selected as the issuer of USDH through a community governance vote in September 2025. Paxos, Frax Finance, Sky, Agora and Ethena also took part in the competition. Native Market then built a fiat-backed stablecoin structure with cash, short-term U.S. Treasuries, repurchase agreements and tokenised Treasury products as reserve assets.

Against that backdrop, Hyperliquid is also expanding its trading scope. It launched the HIP-4 prediction market in early May and recorded 6.05 million contract trades on the first day. Its user base has grown to 1.19 million wallets, and it is adding new trading areas such as commodities and stocks through the HIP-3 system.

Ultimately, the deal is focused more on reorganising Hyperliquid’s settlement structure around USDC than on a simple acquisition of brand assets. As stablecoin liquidity consolidates into a single dollar token, the trading and settlement structure on Hyperliquid is increasingly likely to change as well.

Today we’re expanding our support for @HyperliquidX by becoming the platform’s official treasury deployer of USDC. Onchain markets operate 24/7 and require collateral that is always available, instantly transferable, and deeply liquid - USDC delivers exactly that. Alongside… pic.twitter.com/ki7QmSJVdH