Hyperliquid launched native manual borrowing on Sept. 18, letting users pledge HYPE or Bitcoin as collateral to borrow USDC or USDT directly through HyperCore. The rollout landed as HYPE hit a fresh all-time high above $90, and Hyperliquid said $269 million in assets were borrowed on the first day.
Hyperliquid opened native manual borrowing on its HyperCore infrastructure, letting users pledge HYPE or Bitcoin as collateral to borrow USDC or USDT without relying on separate lending protocols. The exchange said $269 million in assets were borrowed on Friday, giving the new product immediate scale.
The launch coincided with a rally in HYPE. The token traded above $90 on Friday, with an intraday high of about $91.06, surpassing its previous record near $89.60. HYPE has risen roughly 15% this week, extending a rally from roughly $77 earlier in the week.
Borrowing runs as a separate credit primitive
Founder Jeff Yan said Hyperliquid built borrowing and lending as a separate HyperCore primitive rather than embedding credit directly into margin accounts, keeping lending risk separate from derivatives exposure. Portfolio margin then operates as an orchestration layer, combining borrowing with perpetuals, spot markets and other HyperCore products.
That design meant borrowers had access to more than $400 million of supplied liquidity from the outset, since the same pools already supported portfolio-margin activity. HYPE carries a 65% loan-to-value ratio, while Bitcoin has a 50% LTV; liquidation thresholds sit at 82.5% for HYPE and 75% for Bitcoin. Stablecoin suppliers earn variable interest based on utilization, while borrowers pay interest on USDC and USDT.
Yan compared the architecture to Amazon separating its computing infrastructure into Amazon Web Services, allowing one underlying system to support products beyond the original business. According to Jeff Yan: "Do one thing and do it well", invoking the Unix design principle.
Lending adds to Hyperliquid's growing liquidity base
The rollout comes as Hyperliquid gains broader distribution. Two days before the launch, Payward, Kraken's parent company, announced plans to deploy on-chain perpetual futures markets for US clients, starting with Hyperliquid's HIP-3 framework.
Hyperliquid is also drawing a growing pool of stablecoin liquidity, with total stablecoin supply on the network approaching $7 billion. Its circulating USDC supply sits at about $6.77 billion, slightly above Solana's roughly $6.72 billion, leaving Hyperliquid behind only Ethereum in USDC supply. For HYPE holders, the new product creates a way to access dollar liquidity without selling their tokens.
Source: CryptoSlate
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