Circle Expands Support for USDC on Hyperliquid

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Hyperliquid has established itself as a high-performance environment for decentralized trading, combining a fully onchain order book with deep liquidity and a seamless user experience. Hyperliquid is expanding beyond perpetuals into outcome-based markets, unlocking new ways for traders and builders to access liquidity, manage collateral, and move capital onchain.

As these new markets emerge, Circle is becoming the technical deployer of USDC as an Aligned Quote Asset (AQA). The AQA spec enables stablecoins to structurally align with the protocol, and as technical deployer, Circle is responsible for reliable mint, redemption, and cross-chain transfer infrastructure for USDC on Hyperliquid.

With this commitment to AQA, USDC will continue as the primary collateral asset across HIP-1, HIP-2, HIP-3, and now HIP-4 markets. USDC remains a foundational asset across Hyperliquid, with an expanding role in liquidity, collateral, and capital movement across the platform.

Circle’s financial investment in the Hyperliquid ecosystem

Circle’s role in the ecosystem extends beyond infrastructure support. In September 2025, Circle became a direct stakeholder in Hyperliquid with its first HYPE token purchase, marking the company's initial financial investment in the network alongside the launch of native USDC and CCTP on HyperEVM.

Circle is now significantly increasing that position by staking 500,000 HYPE tokens. Staking puts Circle's capital to work securing the network, deepens the company's economic alignment with Hyperliquid's long-term performance, and moves Circle closer to becoming a validator on Hyperliquid.

A proven foundation for DeFi and trading

USDC is a regulated¹, fully reserved digital dollar redeemable 1:1 for US dollars², and is trusted by traders, institutions, and developers, across the Hyperliquid ecosystem. 

USDC, supported by Circle’s on/offramps and crosschain infrastructure, serves as a core building block for use cases on Hyperliquid, including:

• Perpetuals and spot trading: Widely used as collateral, settlement, and as a quote asset across markets
• DeFi apps on HyperEVM: Easily integrated into apps for payments, trading, and financial services
• Ecosystem liquidity: Supporting a growing range of trading strategies and use cases
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Enabling growth across the ecosystem

Hyperliquid’s growth reflects a broader shift toward more sophisticated, onchain financial markets. USDC and Circle’s native cross-chain infrastructure play an important role in this evolution by:

• Providing a trusted digital dollar for global users
• Supporting composable, onchain financial infrastructure
• Enabling interoperability across digital asset ecosystems

Together, USDC and Circle’s infrastructure help connect liquidity, users, and applications across Hyperliquid’s evolving market structure.

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_{¹ USDC is issued by regulated affiliates of Circle. A list of Circle’s regulatory authorizations can be found here.
² Circle Mint customers are able to redeem USDC directly from Circle. In addition, Circle will redeem all USDC presented to it for redemption in compliance with MiCAR, regardless of whether the holder is a Circle Mint customer. Circle Mint is currently available only to institutions and is not available to individuals.}