HyperLiquid, a layer-1 blockchain and decentralized exchange for perpetual futures (perps), has experienced a notable outflow of the USDC stablecoin amid speculation North Korean hackers are interacting with the platform, according to a post on X by pseudonymous observer Tay, known for tracking threats posed by to crypto protocols by the country.

A record $60 million of USDC fled the exchange by 10:00 UTC Monday, according to Hashed Official’s Dune-based tracker. USDC, the world’s second-largest dollar-pegged stablecoin, is used as collateral on HyperLiquid. The deposit bridge still holds $2.2 billion in USDC.

Addresses associated with hackers from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) have accrued losses exceeding $700,000 while trading on HyperLiquid, Tay said. The transactions indicate the hackers are potentially familiarizing themselves with the platform’s inner workings to launch a malicious attack.

“DPRK doesn’t trade. DPRK tests,” Tay said.

CoinDesk contacted HyperLiquid on X for comments on the USDC outflows and potential threat from North Korea.

Tay said they reached out to the platform two weeks ago, offering help in countering a potential threat.

“I really want to emphasize that these are the most sophisticated and rapidly evolving of all of the DPRK threat groups. They are very creative and persistent. They also get their hands on 0days (such as the one Chrome patched today,” Tay’s message to the platform said.

HyperLiquid is the leading on-chain perpetuals exchange, commanding over 50% of the total on-chain perpetuals trading volume, which tallied $8.6 billion in the past 24 hours.

The platform debuted its token HYPE on Nov. 29. Since then, it has
surged over 600% to $28.6, briefly topping $10 billion in market capitalization. As of writing, HYPE was the 22nd largest digital asset in the world, according to Coingecko.

There’s been a change of guard at the rankings of the $3.4 billion tokenized Treasuries market.

Asset manager Hashnote’s USYC token zoomed over $1.2 billion in market capitalization, growing five-fold in size over the past three months, rwa.xyz data shows. It has toppled the $450 million BUIDL, issued by asset management behemoth BlackRock and tokenization firm Securitize, which was the largest product by size since April.

USYC is the token representation of the Hashnote International Short Duration Yield Fund, which, according to the company’s website, invests in reverse repo agreements on U.S. government-backed securities and Treasury bills held in custody at the Bank of New York Mellon.

Hashnote’s quick growth underscores the importance of interconnecting tokenized products with decentralized finance (DeFi) applications and presenting their tokens available as building blocks for other products — or composability, in crypto lingo — to scale and reach broader adoption. It also showcases crypto investors’ appetite for yield-generating stablecoins, which are increasingly backed by tokenized products.

USYC, for example, has greatly benefited from the rapid ascent of the budding decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Usual and its real-world asset-backed, yield-generating stablecoin, USD0.

Usual is pursuing the market share of centralized stablecoins like Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC by redistributing a portion of revenues from its stablecoin’s backing assets to holders. USD0 is primarily backed by USYC currently, but the protocol aims to add more RWAs to reserves in the future. It has recently announced the addition of Ethena’s USDtb stablecoin, which is built on top of BUIDL.

“The bull market triggered a massive inflow into stablecoins, yet the core issue with the largest stablecoins remains: they lack rewards for end users and do not give access to the yield they generate,” said David Shuttleworth, partner at Anagram. “Moreover, users do not get access to the protocol’s equity by holding USDT or USDC.”

“Usual’s appeal is that it redistributes the yield along with ownership in the protocol back to users,” he added.

The protocol, and hence its USD0 stablecoin, has raked in $1.3 billion over the past few months as crypto investors chased on-chain yield opportunities. Another significant catalyst of growth was the protocol’s governance token (USUAL) airdrop and exchange listing on Wednesday. USUAL started trading on Binance on Wednesday, and vastly outperformed the shaky broader crypto market, appreciating some 50% since then, per CoinGecko data.

BlackRock’s BUIDL also enjoyed rapid growth earlier this year, driven by DeFi platform Ondo Finance making the token the key reserve asset of its own yield-earning product, the Ondo Short-Term US Government Treasuries (OUSG) token.

Chainlink formed a double-bottom pattern, pointing to a potential rebound, as signs showed that some whales were accumulating the token.

Chainlink (LINK), the biggest oracle provider, bottomed at $20.12 on Friday and rebounded to $22.50 on Sunday, Dec. 22. Still, the coin remains about 27% from its highest point this month, meaning that it is in a bear market.

A potential catalyst for the LINK token is that whales are accumulating it. According to LookOnChain, nine new wallets withdrew 362,380 coins from Binance in the last two days. These coins are now valued at over $8.19 million.

Crypto.news reported last week that another whale accumulated 65,000 LINK coins valued at $1.8 million.

These whales bought Chainlink a week after World Liberty Financial (WLFI), the DeFi platform launched by the Trump family, bought over 78,300 LINK tokens valued at over $1.7 million. It’s worth noting that President-elect Trump and his family mostly own WLFI tokens.

Chainlink, known in the crypto industry for its fundamentals, is the biggest oracle in the sector with over $35 billion in total value secured. That figure is higher than its biggest competitors like Chronicle, Pyth, Edge, and Redstone.

Chainlink’s ecosystem will likely grow as more chains and networks embrace its technology. Justin Sun’s Tron, the most recent chain to use its oracles, has switched from WINKLink to Chainlink.

Chainlink has also formed major partnerships in the Real World Asset tokenization industry, including by companies like Coinbase, Emirates NBD, SWIFT, and UBS. 

Chainlink price formed a double-bottom pattern

LINK, like other cryptocurrencies, has dropped sharply in the past few days as concerns about the Federal Reserve remained.

The token has remained above the 50-day moving average on the daily chart. Most importantly, it has formed a double-bottom chart pattern at $20.12. This pattern happens when an asset fails to move below a specific price two times. It is one of the most bullish reversal patterns in the market.

LINK has also formed an inverse hammer pattern, a popular reversal sign. Therefore, the coin is likely to bounce back in the next few days as investors target the key psychological at $30, which is about 35% above the current level.

On the flip side, the bullish view will become invalid if the coin drops below the double-bottom point at $20.12.