Make Money in a Bear Market with These 3 Protocols!
Guard your cash and multiply it by reading this guide.
The ongoing bear market may last another six to twelve months. You can read my previous post on that and my estimates for a bottom. Until then, you want to build a nice stash of cash ready to be deployed when the time is right!
To do so, I recommend using 3 protocols to compound your cash! Keep reading to find all about it plus a bonus activity for all YCC members!
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Make Money in a Bear Market with These 3 Protocols!
The Hyperliquid HLP vault is the undisputed king to farm yields in a bear market. That’s because this vault pays best in a bear market: the more traders get liquidated, the more profits you’ll make by depositing cash (USDC) in this vault.
Let’s have a look at its historic returns first (source).
As you can see, only in this January deposits in the vault returned a 6.33% yield, more than other protocols do in a year! That’s huge and miles above US treasuries (4%) or DeFi rates like AAVE (1.5% to 5%).
And the year just started.
If you’re bearish, expect more market turmoil in the future which will lead to more liquidations = profits for the vault. That means this vault will continue to perform well above market rates. In 2025, the yearly yield was over 15%. In 2024, it was even higher at over 30%!
This vault is not without risks, of course. You can see in the table two months with negative returns. However, those are only two months out of 34 months!
I believe the risk/reward ratio is very attractive. No wonder over 380 million has been deposited in this vault.
If you got cash, this is a prime protocol to consider. Moreover, should Bitcoin drop under 50k later this year, you only need to withdraw from the vault and buy BTC on Hyperliquid’s spot market. Flawless and easy.
You can then withdraw the BTC to your cold wallet on the native chain (see image below). You won’t get anything better than this.
Fluid is like AAVE, but with additional features, including integration with newer protocol like USDai. This USDai vault offers 9.4% APR right now. That’s over 2x the market rate!
You can also multiply your stablecoin yields by using leverage. As long as you trust the peg of paired stablecoins (like USDe), you can reach over 12-18% APY.
I don’t recommend using this when market is volatile since USDe could lose peg and that can trigger liquidations. Best to not be too greedy and keep your liquidation lower than max if you go for this. However, HLP is a better choice risk wise.
If you like safe and boring vaults following market rates, you can go with Spark 4% yield on USDC. Spark protocol will always offer you a stable rate close to US treasuries.
If you are not interested in farming stablecoins yields and want to keep exposure to BTC and ETH for example, you can consider the single pair vaults on GMX.
These yields are pretty solid all things considered since the ETH yield on AAVE is only 2%. On GMX its over 5%. On BTC, you will rarely find any yield over 2% without massive risks.
BONUS - Farm Valor Points on Legion!
This is how you can to boost your future airdrops and public sales!
As promised, we’ve partnered with Legion to bring the best opportunities to YCC members! This may include special sale allocations and airdrops to our community members in the future!
See here a list with previous sales by Legion.
To become eligible, log in to Legion with your Discord account and complete the YCC activities to accrue Valor Points (click Tunisia on the map). These points will increase your chances to get allocations/airdrops in the future via the Legion platform.
Start your conquest now and send your feedback either via a direct message to Duo or on the Legion Discord.
Let me know in the comments what is your favorite protocol to farm yields in 2026? Thanks for reading and good luck!
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Low risk DeFi is the key for bear markets