21Shares has filed an amended S-1 with the SEC for a Hyperliquid ETF under the ticker THYP, introducing a staking-integrated custody model designed to generate yield for shareholders — putting it in direct competition with Bitwise and Grayscale for the first regulated HYPE fund.
Three asset managers are now in a genuine footrace to launch the first regulated Hyperliquid ETF in the United States, and 21Shares just made its bid considerably more interesting.
The Swiss-headquartered ETP provider filed an amended S-1 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, officially designating THYP as the ticker for its 21Shares Hyperliquid ETF. The fund would list on Nasdaq and charge a management fee of 59 basis points — undercutting Bitwise's competing BHYP filing, which carries a 0.67 per cent fee.
But the real differentiator is not the fee. It is the staking provision. 21Shares' amended prospectus introduces what the filing describes as a "staking-integrated" custody model: the fund intends to delegate a significant portion of its HYPE holdings to institutional validators, participating in Hyperliquid's proof-of-stake consensus mechanism and distributing the resulting yield to shareholders. Copper and Zodia Custody would handle the delegation under a zero-trust architecture, with assets remaining in cold-vault environments throughout.
If the SEC permits it, THYP would function as a productive asset rather than a passive one — a material departure from the spot bitcoin ETFs that launched in January 2024, which simply hold coins and charge a fee for the privilege. The staking yield, 21Shares argues, could effectively offset the management fee and produce net-positive returns for investors. That's an attractive pitch for the pension funds and endowments that increasingly populate the ETF buyer universe.
Whether the SEC will allow it is another matter entirely. The commission has been cautious about staking within ETF wrappers, and no spot crypto ETF in the US currently stakes its underlying holdings. The amended filing likely reflects feedback from SEC staff — a sign that the conversation is at least happening — but approval is far from guaranteed. A multi-agency review of the THYP filing is reportedly scheduled for late May.
Hyperliquid's appeal to institutional allocators is unusual in the crypto ETF landscape. The protocol launched without venture capital backing, without a private token sale, and without insider allocations — a rarity that has made it something of a philosophical favourite among the decentralisation-minded wing of the industry. It has also, more prosaically, become one of the most active derivatives exchanges in crypto; Hyperliquid cracked the top ten by volume in Q1 2026, processing more notional value than several established centralised competitors.
The competition for a HYPE ETF is heating up accordingly. Bitwise filed its initial application in September 2025 and submitted a second amended prospectus on 10 April, adding four approved market makers and confirming its fund would list on NYSE Arca. Grayscale entered the race in March with its own Nasdaq filing, though its prospectus has yet to be amended with comparable detail. 21Shares and Bitwise have already launched spot Solana ETFs in the US, so the infrastructure and regulatory relationships are well established.
The HYPE token itself has responded to the institutional attention. It traded near $19 on Tuesday, up from a 2026 low of around $8 in early February, giving the protocol a fully diluted valuation north of $19 billion. Whether that price already reflects ETF optimism is a question every prospective buyer needs to answer for themselves.
What's clear is that the altcoin ETF pipeline has moved well beyond bitcoin and ether. Solana, Dogecoin, XRP, and now Hyperliquid all have live or pending fund applications. The asset management industry has decided that crypto-native products are worth packaging for traditional investors — and the race to be first to market with each new token is becoming as competitive as any product launch in traditional finance. The SEC's late-May review of THYP will be one of the next inflection points.
