pretty much consensus rn that crypto as an asset class is cooked compared to stonks
but the silver lining here is that the investible universe becomes so ridiculously small - anyone who's moderately locked in can easily pick out the winners
say what you want but
ctβs cypherpunk nerd era was infinitely better than whatever we have going on right now with casino badges and self-important VCs on the timeline
The best time to sell all your ETH and buy Hyperliquid was when it first launched. The second best time is right now.
@fundstrat you only have one way out of your trade.
Hyperliquid.
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crypto is no longer one industry β
it's at least 4:
1. stablecoins + payments
2. Bitcoin, crypto asset class
3. tokenization + onchain financial services (defi)
4. blockchain infrastructure
they are of course inter-related. but increasingly divergent in context
which is part of the mixed vibe right now
the most dangerous place to be when you're losing money is a group chat full of people losing the exact same money.
in 2018 i was in 10+ telegram rooms for a coin i was completely underwater on.
everyone in there was down. everyone in there was bullish.
every red candle got a new explanation from the founder. every piece of bad news got reframed. the founder would post an update and we'd all talk each other into believing it.
felt like community at the time. looking back it was just a cope machine.
nobody in that group had an incentive to tell the truth. we all just needed the price to go up.
the people most likely to give you honest feedback on a position are the ones who aren't in it.
Everyone is arguing about $USDH dying. They're missing the point entirely. What happened today is the single most important business move in Hyperliquid's history.
Let me explain. Revenue, liquidity, politics, lobby, and what it means for the USDH vote debate.
Coinbase is now the official treasury deployer of $USDC on Hyperliquid under AQAv2. Circle handles the technical side (CCTP, cross-chain infra). Both are staking hyperliquid:native. Native Markets agreed to sell the USDH brand assets to Coinbase.
$USDH is sunsetting. But the mechanics it pioneered are not. They just got applied to a $4.7B asset instead of a $100M one.
Let's break down why this is a win on every single front.
LIQUIDITY
The biggest complaint from traders and builders for months: fragmentation. $USDH had the alignment but not the liquidity. $USDC had the liquidity but not the alignment. You had to choose.
That choice is gone. One stablecoin. One orderbook per pair. No split liquidity. No confusion for HIP-3 deployers picking a quote asset. No friction for new users bridging in.
$4.7B in USDC on Hyperliquid, 2x year over year. That is the base generating yield now, not $100M.
REVENUE
Under AQAv2, the treasury deployer shares 90% of the reserve yield revenue with the protocol. Run the numbers on the current $USDC supply:
$4.7B at 3.8% interest rate, 90% shared with the Assistance Fund = $160M+ per year flowing directly into HYPE buybacks. That is $440K per day. Every day.
For context, USDH at peak supply was generating a fraction of this on $100M. The AQA model worked. It just needed to be applied at the right scale.
POLITICS AND LOBBYING
This is the angle most people are sleeping on. Coinbase is the largest publicly traded crypto company in the US. They spent over $100M on crypto lobbying and political action in the last cycle. They are the single most powerful voice for crypto regulation in Washington.
The CLARITY Act markup is happening today. Coinbase has been one of its strongest advocates. Having them financially aligned with Hyperliquid, staking HYPE, operating as treasury deployer, is not just a liquidity play. It is a regulatory shield.
Every conversation about "is Hyperliquid a US regulatory risk" just got a lot harder to make when Coinbase is literally staked into the network.
Circle staking 500K HYPE and moving toward becoming a validator. Jeremy Allaire posting "Hyperliquid." That is institutional endorsement at the highest level.
THE USDH QUESTION
"Was USDH a failure?" "Was the vote theater?" "Did Native Markets just flip an asset?"
No. USDH was a weapon. It was a credible threat that proved a protocol can demand yield sharing from stablecoin issuers. Before USDH, Hyperliquid had $5B+ in USDC generating $150-200M/year for Circle and Coinbase. The protocol saw none of it.
USDH launched. The AQA model proved that yield can be redirected onchain, transparently, back to the protocol. It only reached $100M in supply but that was never the point. The point was forcing incumbents to the table.
Basit said it best: the entire lifecycle of USDH from launch to sunset should be studied. Coinbase didn't come to Hyperliquid out of goodwill. They came because USDH proved they would lose the venue if they didn't align.
"But Paxos offered better economics during the vote." Maybe on paper. But 95-100% of a stablecoin that might have also struggled to reach $100M in supply is still less revenue than 90% of $4.7B. The vote was never about picking the best yield split on a small asset. It was about creating the leverage to capture yield on the dominant one.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR BUILDERS
USDC becomes the canonical quote asset for HIP-4 outcome markets. No more guessing which stablecoin to build around. Hyper Foundation is issuing grants to HIP-3 and HIP-1 deployers who integrated USDH to cover migration costs. Feeless conversions from USDH to USDC during the transition.
For HIP-3 deployers running equity perps, commodity perps, outcome markets: one liquidity pool, one collateral asset, deeper books.
SECOND ORDER EFFECTS
Coinbase operating perps through Hyperliquid via builder codes? Not confirmed, but now structurally possible. Their existing perp product is weak. Hyperliquid's infrastructure is the best in crypto. The incentive alignment is there.
Tether now has a clear path to compete. AQAv2 is an open spec. Any stablecoin issuer can stake 500K HYPE and share yield to become an aligned quote asset. Competition is good.
AQAv2 becomes a blueprint for every other chain. Hyperliquid just proved that a protocol can force the largest stablecoin issuers in crypto to share revenue at the protocol level. No one has done this before.
Hyperliquid.
Not sure people understand the magnitude of this announcement
Hyperliquid has $5b USDC on its platform, AQAv2 ensures that "the vast majority of reserve yield" from USDC will now be used to buyback even more HYPE
If we assume that the "vast majority" is considered ~80-90%, a conservative 3.5% yield would mean an additional $140m - $160m yearly revenue. Convert that into daily buybacks and we're looking at an additional ~$400k of buybacks per day. We've been hovering at around $1.5m revenue per day so that would be a 26% increase in daily revenue, that's insane
I've been waiting for some kind of catalyst that could have potentially brought HYPE out of its revenue slump, and I was thinking perhaps a gradual end to HIP-3 growth mode was going to be that catalyst, but this partnership with Coinbase/Circle should do the trick
The news came out at as HYPE was hitting a strong support level so it felt like a very natural spot for me to go long
Additionally we're also seeing a very successful pre-IPO trial with CBRS which gave a great entry for retail traders (this will surely be talked about outside of crypto) so that also helps add to the conviction
Hyperliquid
For me ~ deployed roughly 900K into 179 angel investments across the past two cycles.
β’ 72 profitable (40%)
β’ 22 breakeven (12%)
β’ 15 token-lost (8%)
β’ 70 rugged or no news (40%)
52% hit rate sounds good but I lost 40% of my capital. However, thankfully some moonshots returned 10-100x. Those outlier wins covered the losses and more.
Looking back, I wouldn't have done it though. That $900K could have been better deployed into 3-5 conviction liquid thesis bets and gotten better returns with way less drama and effort.
Angel investing is a hit-or-miss. In retrospect, here's what I would have told my past self to look at.
1) Founder integrity (Are they a serial entrepreneur? Run as far as you can.)
2) Founder time commitment (Are they crypto-native? Are they working on side projects or are they all in? Do you see them "networking" at conferences and parties? Run!)
3) Product-market fit (Do they have real users? Or are they just paying VCs/KOLs/shillers to talk about it?)
4) Ability to scale and build community (Can they handle growth? Do people naturally gravitate towards them?)
Angel investing is not for the weak. You might hit some wins, but more likely you're just funding some rando who thinks he's the goat and will disappear once the market turns.