Key Takeaways:
- Bitwise filed a second amendment for its BHYP ETF on April 10, 2026, signaling a U.S. launch may be near.
- Four issuers, including Grayscale and Vaneck are racing to offer spot HYPE exposure to U.S. investors.
- HYPE is up 200% in the past year, fueled by Hyperliquid’s fee buyback mechanism and record perps volume.
Four Asset Managers, Including Grayscale and Vaneck Race to Launch U.S. HYPE Spot ETF
Balchunas posted on X that the update typically precedes a near-term listing, noting that HYPE is up 200% over the past year and that Bitwise appears to be moving while market conditions favor the product. The firm originally filed its S-1 registration statement in September 2025 and submitted Amendment No. 1 on Dec. 15, 2025, which added the BHYP ticker, the fee, and an 8-A registration statement. Both actions are standard late-stage markers in the SEC’s ETF review process.
The U.S. spot ETF has not yet received approval. It remains under SEC review. However, the repeated amendments indicate Bitwise has finalized its offering structure and is ready to list. The 0.67% fee sits above the 0.20-0.25% range common among bitcoin spot ETFs. Bitwise frames the higher cost as reflecting direct exposure to a high-margin decentralized finance (DeFi) perpetuals platform, where fees from trading activity drive an on-chain buyback-and-burn program tied directly to HYPE’s value.
One day before the latest U.S. filing update, on April 9, 2026, Bitwise Europe launched the Bitwise Hyperliquid Staking ETP on Deutsche Boerse Xetra under the same BHYP ticker. The European product carries a 0.85% total expense ratio, holds HYPE in cold storage, tracks the Kaiko HYPE Reference Rate, and targets approximately 1% net staking rewards annually.
Bitwise is one of four asset managers currently pursuing U.S. spot ETF exposure to HYPE. 21shares filed an S-1 on Oct. 29, 2025 for its 21shares Hyperliquid ETF with no finalized ticker. Grayscale filed for the Grayscale HYPE ETF on March 21, 2026, proposing the GHYP ticker on Nasdaq with Coinbase Custody as custodian. Vaneck has confirmed plans for a HYPE spot staking ETF under the proposed ticker VHYP, with filings referenced alongside its European ETP announcements in September 2025.
No filings from Blackrock, Fidelity, or others have been made public at the time of writing. Hyperliquid is a layer one (L1) blockchain built specifically for onchain derivatives trading. Its core engine, Hypercore, supports fully onchain perpetual futures and spot order books with sub-second block times, single-block finality, and throughput exceeding 100,000 orders per second. A companion layer, HyperEVM, provides EVM compatibility for smart contract applications that interact directly with the exchange.
The platform runs on HyperBFT consensus and handles order execution in milliseconds with no off-chain components. Hyperliquid recorded billions of dollars in perpetuals volume during macro volatility events in 2024 and 2025, including oil and gold perps, positioning it as the leading onchain perps exchange by volume. Amidst its growth, Hyperliquid has seen a wide variety of competitors nipping at its heels.
The HYPE token launched Nov. 29, 2024, via an airdrop to more than 90,000 early users. Total supply is fixed at 1 billion tokens. The token is used for governance, staking, gas on HyperEVM, and as the primary economic beneficiary of platform revenue. A significant portion of Hyperliquid‘s trading fees flow into an Assistance Fund that continuously buys back and burns HYPE, creating a direct link between platform activity and token value.
Annualized protocol revenue runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars, with margins that analysts estimate above 97%. The buyback mechanism gives HYPE a deflationary structure that functions differently from most governance tokens.
The exchange-traded product filings represent an attempt by traditional financial (TradFi) institutions to package that fee-generating machine into a brokerage-accessible product. Whether or not the SEC approves any of the four pending U.S. applications, the European products are already live and adding institutional access to HYPE staking returns.
Approval timelines for the U.S. filings remain tied to the SEC review calendar. All four issuers are waiting.
