Hyperliquid Captures 90% of USDC Reserve Revenue on $6 Billion Holdings

USDC Reserve Yield Enters the Mix

A Grayscale research report published on Friday, October 30, maps how far Hyperliquid's income now stretches beyond its core trading desk, and the stablecoin USDC sits inside one of the newest lines. Research head Zach Pandl finds that roughly $6 billion in USDC is held on the decentralized exchange, and that under an arrangement between Coinbase and Circle, 90% of the reserve revenue those deposits generate is returned to Hyperliquid through Coinbase. Because the USDC price is pegged to the dollar, that income stems from interest on reserve balances rather than from any appreciation of the asset.

Pandl's broader finding is diversification. September brought Hyperliquid about $105 million in revenue, roughly level with the $108 million recorded in the same month a year earlier, despite a period that spanned bear-market conditions. In mid-2025, fees from perpetual futures on assets the Hyperliquid team listed itself still made up more than 90% of income; that share has since narrowed to about 64%. The USDC reserve revenue stream now sits alongside three other growing lines: deployer-listed perpetuals under HIP-3, builder codes, and spot trading, gas fees and ticker auctions, the last group adding about $5 million in September. HIP-3 opens listing to third parties. Independent deployers can launch stock perpetuals on assets ranging from crude oil to pre-IPO equity, keeping up to half of the trading fees while the remainder flows to the protocol. Ticker auctions, in which projects bid for listing codes on HyperEVM, add a smaller but growing slice alongside gas and priority fees. For a venue once almost wholly dependent on its own listings, a $6 billion deposit base paying recurring yield changes the shape of the profit and loss statement. None of these streams existed at meaningful scale when the venue launched, which is why the composition shift matters as much as the level.

Non-Core Fees Double to $38 Million

Income from everything outside the core fee stream reached $38 million in September, twice the level of the same month a year earlier, the report states. Pandl treats stablecoin reserve yield as the steadiest of the new lines: it depends on the balance of assets held and on prevailing interest rates, not on trading volume, so it holds up when activity thins.

Builder codes explain part of the remaining picture. External wallets, trading interfaces and exchanges route orders to Hyperliquid and may add their own surcharge for doing so. Hyperliquid itself does not collect that surcharge, but it does earn the ordinary trading fees such orders generate, which keeps the venue's own take distinct from the fees its ecosystem partners charge. The distinction matters for anyone modeling Hyperliquid's revenue: a large share of the fees visible on the platform flows to builders rather than to the protocol's treasury. The bigger lever is compliant US access. Payward, the parent of exchange Kraken, is working to become the first operator to run a market under Hyperliquid's HIP-3 framework inside the regulatory perimeter of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). ICE, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, has separately announced a plan to stand up a US-compliant perpetual futures market on Hyperliquid in partnership with HIP-3 deployer Trade.xyz. Either route would let US traders reach the venue without leaving US rules. USDC plumbing is widening elsewhere too, with Circle reporting 30% growth in USDC custody on Kraken, a figure that shows how much of the stablecoin's supply now sits in exchange reserve channels. If both HIP-3 routes go live, the reserve and fee income would face regulated alternatives, a comparison the current September figures do not yet have to make.

The report's most consequential line for USDC holders is the reserve arrangement itself. It converts otherwise idle deposits on Hyperliquid into a protocol revenue stream that scales with balances rather than with market activity, and it ties Circle's asset into the venue's economics at a scale few decentralized venues match. The dependence cuts both ways: if rates fall or deposits migrate to compliant venues, the yield line shrinks with them, a sensitivity trading fees do not share. Mizuho's warning that AI assistants could erode USDC demand names one such pressure on the deposit base. On the numbers themselves, Grayscale sets September against September on a reported basis and names no adjustments, so the doubling of non-core fees is like-for-like.