Alpha Recap #26: Coinbase Acquires USDH, Yield Opportunity, and a Shift in Pre-IPO Markets

The Alpha Recap is designed to highlight the most important developments in the crypto market each week. Every Friday, we deliver a curated overview of the most valuable insights from our Alpha Feed.

Reserved for OAK Premium members, the Alpha Feed brings together market insights, yield and airdrop strategies, as well as key information shaping the crypto landscape. In other words, it reflects OAK Research’s core philosophy: delivering curated content that goes beyond market noise.

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Coinbase acquires USDH and becomes the official USDC deployer on Hyperliquid

This is the week's biggest news: Coinbase pulled off a major coup by becoming the treasury deployer of USDC on Hyperliquid, while Circle simultaneously becomes the technical deployer for its CCTP and cross-chain infrastructure.

In addition, Coinbase has acquired the rights to Native Markets' USDH, which, as a reminder, was the only aligned quote asset on Hyperliquid. Under the agreement, USDH will gradually be phased out to clear the way for USDC's development as the main aligned quote asset within the Hyperliquid ecosystem.

On paper, this is extremely positive for Hyperliquid: Coinbase has committed to sharing 90% of its USDC-related revenues (which come from the T-bills serving as collateral). This could translate into roughly $137 to $160 million in additional annualized revenue for the protocol, or 22 to 26% more than current figures.

But while the news is positive from a purely economic and strategic standpoint (Circle and Coinbase are the ones who bent the knee, not the other way around), it's worth remembering that USDH's original purpose was precisely to reduce Hyperliquid's dependence on USDC while favoring the minting of a fully native asset.

This is where the process becomes questionable. USDH was meant to be the "Hyperliquid-aligned" stablecoin designed for the ecosystem. Today, Native Markets is handing the brand rights over to Coinbase as if it were a fully private asset, when in fact its value stemmed primarily from the mandate granted by the community.

All that said, what will this episode really change for Hyperliquid? You'll find the rest in our dedicated Alpha on the subject.

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PT-apyUSD: Looping opportunity on Pendle and Morpho (23.4 to 35.7% APY)

Apyx is part of a new wave of protocols seeking to turn traditional corporate dividends into DeFi yield. Concretely, the protocol captures dividends from Strategy's STRCs, currently around 11% per year, and redistributes them on-chain through its yield-bearing stablecoin, apyUSD. Launched in mid-March, it has already found significant traction, with its market cap now exceeding $162 million.

In reality, the appeal of this mechanism goes far beyond the simple native yield: by leveraging Pendle, which makes it possible to lock in a fixed annualized rate via its PTs, apyUSD opens the door to far more advanced strategies. That's precisely what we explored for you this week. Indeed, starting from PT-apyUSD and using a looping strategy on Morpho, it becomes possible to substantially amplify the base yield, with a risk profile that remains manageable depending on the leverage level chosen.

In the full article, we break down the mechanics step by step: current market conditions, the various leverage levels available with their associated APYs (up to 35.7%), as well as the risk parameters to monitor closely.

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Anthropic and OpenAI killed the tokenized pre-IPO markets, but what actually happened?

Anthropic and OpenAI quietly tightened their private share transfer policies this week, with a clarification that could have major consequences for an entire segment of the crypto market. Concretely, both companies now specify that unauthorized representations of their shares, particularly through tokenized SPVs, confer no actual rights to their equity and will not be recognized in the context of a potential liquidity event or IPO.

The market's reaction was immediate: on Jupiter, several "Pre-IPO" tokens exposed to OpenAI, Anthropic, or SpaceX plunged sharply, with some losing more than 50% in just a few hours.

PreStocks, which notably marketed its products as being "1:1 backed by SPV exposure to the underlying company shares," finds itself particularly exposed. And with good reason: the legal documentation surrounding these structures had so far remained extremely thin, with some transparency pages settling for a simple "third-party attestation report coming soon" without any real proof of the associated rights.

Conversely, the Pre-IPO markets built on Hyperliquid held up relatively well. The explanation is actually quite simple: the markets offered by Ventuals don't claim to legally represent private shares. They are simply perpetual contracts allowing users to speculate on a company's implied valuation, with no promise of underlying ownership. In other words, the product is framed as purely speculative from the outset, which makes it far harder to challenge legally.

Ultimately, this sequence even indirectly reinforces the credibility of the approach Hyperliquid has chosen. Where some players cultivated a commercially convenient ambiguity around a supposed "real" exposure to private shares, Hyperliquid fully embraces the synthetic and speculative nature of its markets, and that stance has been vindicated.

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