RaaS #599: Hyperliquid Tops Coinbase Trading Volumes!

FalconX Prime Brokerage Financing on Hyperliquid, Farcaster Founders Join Tempo, And Moar!

FalconX now offers prime brokerage margin financing on Hyperliquid, enabling institutional clients to access up to 5x leverage with portfolio-level risk management. Traders can net margin across CEXs and DeFi, using a unified collateral pool and self-custody via Fordefi.

Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan, co-founders of Farcaster, are joining the stablecoin payments startup Tempo, which was incubated by Stripe and Paradigm. Tempo aims to build a fast, low-cost global stablecoin settlement network and has already secured backing from Mastercard, UBS, and Klarna.

Is $26 enough to retire? (Asking for a fren)

Hyperliquid has processed $2.6T in notional volume YTD, nearly double Coinbase’s $1.4T. While Coinbase stock is down 27%, Hyperliquid’s native token is up 31.7%, marking a 58.7% divergence in performance.

MegaETH has unveiled The Rabbithole, its mainnet-native ecosystem hub, now live to the public. Users can bridge, swap, onramp, and explore live or upcoming apps, all via a prompt-based interface, with chat-style discovery, evolving app categories, and user-focused utilities.

Your daily dose of bite-sized crypto news.

1. Binance controls 87% of USD1, the Trump family's stablecoin, the highest concentration on a single exchange, per Forbes.

2. Jump Trading will acquire small stakes in Kalshi Inc. and Polymarket to provide liquidity on their platforms.

3. South Korea launched a probe into Bithumb over a $43 billion fat-finger incident.

4. Phantom announced the launch of Phantom Chat.

5. Bitmine bought another 40,000 ETH, worth about $83.4M for its treasury.

6. Sushi Swap, one of crypto's most established DEXs, has officially launched on Solana.

Backpack unveiled its full token distribution and a novel, long-term aligned model: 25% of tokens will be liquid at TGE, exclusively for users. No insiders or investors get direct allocations; team incentives are locked in a corporate treasury until one year after the IPO.

0x is powering Coinbase’s onchain market infrastructure across its Exchange, Base App, and Developer Platform. With $26B in swap volume and 780K wallets supported, 0x delivers deep liquidity, fast routing, and nearly 100% uptime, helping Coinbase scale token integrations seamlessly across products as it builds toward the “Everything Exchange.”

Ripple has partnered with Figment to integrate institutional-grade staking into Ripple Custody. The collaboration enables banks and other regulated entities to offer staking for Ethereum, Solana, and other PoS networks, without building in-house infrastructure.

Look how they massacred my boy.

Top Gainers: HUNT, PEP, REI, POKT, POWER.

High-signal reads are worth your time, all in one place.

1. In January 2026, Ethereum's institutional presence surged. Fidelity launched FIDD, Morgan Stanley sought an ETH ETF, and Grayscale introduced staking rewards. J.P. Morgan tokenized a $100M fund. Ethereum's tokenized commodities exceeded $5B, solidifying its role in tokenized finance.

2. Animoca predicts crypto’s next chapter will be defined by infrastructure: real-world perps, AI agents transacting onchain, and retail brands driving adoption—powered by vaults, ZK privacy, and stablecoins embedded in global commerce.

3. Aave began 2026 with dominant lending momentum: $57.3B TVL, $23.3B in active loans, and $75.1M in fees. With 62.8% market share, growing RWA traction, and major integrations, Aave leads on L2s and gears up for V4 and a Liquidity Hub rollout.

4. ChatGPT ads are rolling out, marking OpenAI’s shift to ad monetization as user subscriptions plateau. With less than 10% of users paying, this signals a broader trend: AI labs turning to Google-style intent targeting and token-metered usage to sustain growth.

5. “No-KYC” crypto cards exploit corporate loopholes to bypass ID checks, but they’re short-lived and legally fragile. Most collapse in under a year, freezing funds. True non-KYC options exist, but are capped. Long-term safety requires alternatives beyond Visa/Mastercard.

Vitalik’s updated AI x Ethereum vision outlines four key paths: building trustless, private interactions with local LLMs; using Ethereum as an economic layer for agent coordination; scaling decentralized governance and markets with AI-enhanced decision-making; and fulfilling the cypherpunk dream of user sovereignty through AI-verified, UI-free blockchain interaction.

Ethereum is shifting toward zk-proof-based block validation via EIP-8025, removing the need for re-execution. This reduces validator hardware demands, enables stateless syncing, and supports solo staking. With zkVM, ePBS, and witness standardization, rollout begins in 2026.

That’s all for today!