Bob Diamond, the former Barclays CEO who now runs Atlas Merchant Capital, told CNBC on July 31, 2026 that Circle and Hyperliquid are set to become the biggest infrastructure winners once the CLARITY Act passes. The call lands a day before Hyperliquid's own partnership with Coinbase to adopt USDC as its canonical stablecoin.
Bob Diamond, the former Barclays chief executive who now heads Atlas Merchant Capital, told CNBC on July 31, 2026 that Circle and Hyperliquid will be the CLARITY Act's biggest infrastructure beneficiaries. Diamond's firm already holds investments in digital payment infrastructure, including exposure to Circle, the company behind the USDC stablecoin.
The CLARITY Act's stablecoin rules
The bipartisan CLARITY Act, formally H.R. 3633, cleared the Senate Banking Committee by a 15-9 vote. Diamond put the odds of full passage by the end of 2026 at somewhere between 50% and 75%. Its most consequential provision for markets is the framework it creates around stablecoin yields, spelling out what issuers and platforms can and cannot do with yield-bearing stablecoins.
Circle's stock on the NYSE, trading under the ticker CRCL, already showed how the market reads that dynamic: shares surged nearly 20% in early May 2026 following the announcement of CLARITY Act rule compromises.
Hyperliquid's Coinbase deal and Circle's HYPE stake
On August 1, 2026, Hyperliquid announced a partnership with Coinbase to integrate USDC as its canonical stablecoin, replacing the platform's former native token USDH. As part of that deal, Circle staked 500,000 HYPE tokens on the Hyperliquid network, the platform's native token, which was trading around $52 with a circulating supply of approximately 220 to 252 million tokens as of early August 2026.
Diamond's mention of Hyperliquid alongside Circle on mainstream financial television is notable on its own. Hyperliquid has largely stayed a crypto-native story until now, well known inside the industry but largely invisible outside it. Having a former Barclays CEO name the platform on CNBC changes who is paying attention.
The case for the bet, and the risk to it
Circle sits at the center of the compliant infrastructure tier almost by definition, since USDC already dominates institutional and DeFi settings where compliance matters. A formal framework around stablecoin yields would open a product expansion path for Circle that is currently legally uncertain. Hyperliquid's bet is that best-in-class trading performance plus regulatory-grade stablecoin rails add up to a platform institutional desks can actually use, with the Coinbase deal supplying USDC's compliance credibility and Circle's HYPE stake aligning the two firms at the network level.
The risk is timeline. Diamond's own 50-75% passage estimate implies a real chance the bill does not clear Congress by year-end. Hyperliquid also faces competitive risk: the on-chain perpetuals and spot-trading space is crowded and moving fast, and a USDC integration plus a Circle alliance do not create a permanent moat on their own.
Source: Crypto Briefing
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