The race to bring Hyperliquid’s native HYPE token to traditional investors is moving forward and 21Shares just signaled it’s further along in that process than most people may have realized.
The crypto asset manager filed its second amended S-1 registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday. Second amendments to ETF filings reflect back-and-forth communication with the SEC, the kind that happens when a product is actually progressing compared to just waiting in line.
Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart noted that the updates in 21Shares’ amended filing are likely the result of comment letters and feedback from the SEC, and that the changes signal the application is gradually advancing.
The filing confirmed something that had previously been unresolved: the fund will list on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol THYP. It also revealed some early mechanics of how the trust is being structured, 21Shares US LLC, the fund’s sponsor, purchased two seed shares at $50 each on March 18 and redeemed them the following week.
The plan going forward is to buy 20,000 shares at $25 per share as an initial seed creation basket to acquire HYPE ahead of the listing. A sponsor fee has not yet been disclosed.
What hyperliquid actually Is and why wall street wants a piece
To understand why four major asset managers are now racing to file for a HYPE ETF, it helps to understand what Hyperliquid has built. Hyperliquid is a decentralized exchange, a trading platform with no central company controlling it, built on its own custom Layer 1 blockchain.
Its core product is perpetual futures trading, which allows users to speculate on crypto prices with leverage and no expiration date on their positions, similar to what professional traders do on large centralized exchanges like Binance. The difference is that on Hyperliquid, every trade, liquidation, and settlement happens transparently on the blockchain itself, rather than being processed behind closed doors on a company’s servers.
Hyperliquid commands over 70 percent of open interest across decentralized perpetual platforms, open interest being the total value of all outstanding contracts, which is a more reliable measure of genuine capital deployment than trading volume alone. The platform processes an enormous number of orders per second, comparable to top centralized exchanges, while keeping everything onchain.
What makes HYPE particularly attractive to institutional investors thinking like equity analysts is the token’s economics. Approximately 97 percent of protocol fees go toward buying back and burning HYPE tokens, creating consistent deflationary pressure that ties the token’s value directly to how much trading activity the platform generates.
The more people trade on Hyperliquid, the more HYPE gets taken out of circulation. It’s a model that looks more like a cash-generating business than most crypto projects, which is part of why names like Arthur Hayes and traditional finance institutions have taken notice.
Hyperliquid also raised no venture capital. The HYPE token launched via a community airdrop in November 2024, distributing 75 percent of total supply to users, a fact that makes its token distribution considerably cleaner than most comparable protocols, and removes the overhang of VC investors looking to exit.
The staking angle
One detail from Tuesday’s filing that stands out is the staking component. The 21Shares Hyperliquid ETF plans to stake between 30 and 70 percent of the HYPE it holds, based on utilization rate analysis applied to historical data, with the amount adjustable depending on conditions at any given time.
Staking in this context means locking up tokens to help secure the Hyperliquid network, in exchange for earning yield from protocol emissions. Including a staking component in an ETF is relatively novel and adds potential income generation on top of simple price exposure — something that could make THYP more attractive than a plain spot product.
A crowded race with no clear winner yet
21Shares filed its original HYPE ETF application back in October 2025. It has since been joined by Bitwise, which filed its own S-1 in September 2025 and submitted a second amendment on April 10 adding a 0.67 percent annual management fee and confirming a planned listing on NYSE Arca.
Grayscale entered the race in March 2026, filing for a HYPE ETF under the ticker GHYP on Nasdaq with Coinbase Custody as custodian. VanEck has also confirmed plans for a HYPE ETF under the proposed ticker VHYP.
None of these products have a confirmed launch date, and all remain subject to SEC approval. What’s notable is that four serious players are now competing for what could be the first spot ETF based on a decentralized exchange token, a category that didn’t exist in US markets as recently as a year ago. The pace of these filings suggests the industry believes approval is a question of when, not if.