Author: Gino Matos
Compiled by Deep潮 TechFlow
DeepInsight Summary: In its first month, the HYPE ETF attracted $161 million in assets with nearly zero redemptions. This is not another round of altcoin speculation—investors are buying into Hyperliquid’s on-chain exchange cash flow: $240 billion in monthly trading volume, nearly $900 million in annualized revenue, and 99% of fees used to repurchase tokens. For investors and industry participants, this marks a shift in the crypto narrative from “technical concepts” to “auditable business models,” signaling that traditional finance is beginning to price on-chain protocols like exchange stocks.
One month after THYP listed on Nasdaq, the three U.S. spot HYPE ETFs have attracted $161 million in net inflows.
June 5 was the only trading day with redemptions, as BHYP saw $2.9 million in outflows, while all other trading days ended in green.
The clean fund flow record reflects the access mechanism—Hyperliquid restricts U.S. users from accessing its platform, making ETFs listed by brokers the only way for U.S. investors to hold HYPE without using a non-custodial wallet.
More sustainable momentum comes from the asset itself: a derivatives trading platform with auditable usage metrics, a fee buyback token mechanism, and a monthly trading volume in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
The business behind the token
According to DefiLlama, the 30-day perpetual contract trading volume is $240.5 billion, the 7-day volume is $72.4 billion, the 24-hour volume is $9.4 billion, and the cumulative perpetual contract trading volume reaches $4.663 trillion.
Current open interest: $8.6 billion; annualized trading fees exceed $1 billion; annualized revenue approaches $886 million.
CoinGlass reported first-quarter derivatives trading volume at nearly $493 billion, while DefiLlama’s cumulative figure has risen to approximately $443 billion. The figure cited by 21Shares at the mid-May launch of THYP was $4.22 trillion.
DefiLlama’s fee methodology shows that 99% of Hyperliquid perpetual contract fees flow into the relief fund for HYPE token buybacks, excluding builder fees. BHYP issuer Bitwise describes this as "nearly all" trading revenue being recycled for open-market buybacks.
This structure allows ETF issuers to promote HYPE just as stock analysts promote exchange-listed stocks—higher trading volume generates higher fees, which fund more buybacks, reducing the circulating supply.
As of June 10, BHYP's own page reports $93.53 million in assets under management, holding 1.587 million HYPE tokens, with a total staking reward rate of 2.25% and a net staking reward rate of 1.18%, and 70% of assets currently staked.
Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan told CNBC that the market has "only penetrated 1% of its potential," adding that most investors still don't know what Hyperliquid is.
Peter Chung, Research Head at Presto Research, observed that early data shows institutions are flowing into the HYPE ETF at a faster rate than into Bitcoin ETFs, when adjusted by market capitalization.
HYPE reached its all-time high of $75.48 on June 2, rising approximately 160% year-to-date, and is currently trading around $61, giving the protocol a fully diluted valuation of nearly $69 billion.
Why is this ETF story different?
The Solana ETF highlights network activity and developer adoption, while the XRP ETF emphasizes payment utility and legal clarity.
The underlying assets of HYPE ETF are equity stakes in the exchange's cash flow engine, featuring transparent metrics such as trading volume, open interest, fees, revenue, and a buyback mechanism directly tied to trading activity.
HIP-3 is Hyperliquid’s permissionless framework that enables the launch of perpetual futures on any asset with a price source, reducing the share of cryptocurrency in total trading volume from approximately 90% to about 65%.
On certain days, five of the top ten traded assets are now traditional markets: the S&P 500, silver, Nasdaq 100, WTI crude oil, and Brent crude oil, through licensed agreements with S&P Dow Jones Indices.
Open interest for HIP-3 reached $1.7 billion in mid-May, a more than 150% increase since February. The largest HIP-3 deployer, Trade.xyz, is a product of Hyperunit, Hyperliquid’s own tokenization division, accounting for $1.58 billion of the total and processing over $100 billion in trading volume since October 2025.
This revenue diversification directly strengthens the bullish case for the exchange capturing trading volume in oil, stock indices, and silver, as it helps sustain fee run rates.
How the exchange stock logic succeeds or fails
The bullish case holds if Hyperliquid’s 30-day perpetual contract trading volume remains above $200 billion, sustaining annualized revenue near the current run rate of $885 million or rising to $1.2 billion as predicted by 21Shares in its upside scenario.
ETF inflows have become a durable third demand channel alongside organic staking and protocol buybacks, with open interest in HIP-3 surpassing $3 billion, and HYPE trading more like a high-growth exchange asset than a high-beta DeFi token.
The bearish scenario begins with monthly trading volume dropping below $15 billion, bringing annualized revenue into the $350 million to $450 million range modeled by 21Shares in its bear case, implying a token price between $15 and $19.
At lower income run rates, token unlocks may exceed buyback demand. Given HYPE’s concentrated circulating supply, ETF outflows will amplify price downward pressure.
The only sustained outflow trading day to date has not caused observable price damage, but if the scale were to increase tenfold, this ratio would look very different.
What are the internal risks in the prospectus?
Bitwise's BHYP filing classifies the fund as outside the 1940 Act, noting that staking introduces slashing risk, reward loss risk, and redemption timing risk. 21Shares flags centralization and validator attack vector risks, as well as regulatory uncertainty.
Both issuers position HYPE as a speculative exposure to early-stage trading platforms, distinct from regulated exchanges.
The platform competes with centralized exchanges that have deeper liquidity and more robust compliance infrastructure, and relies on builders continuing to deploy HIP-3 markets at scale.
Hyperliquid became a 24/7 macro trading platform, partly due to traders scrambling for oil exposure over the weekend during the U.S.-Iran conflict last summer, when traditional futures exchanges were closed.
That growth event brought the platform into direct contact with commodity regulators, who have historically been aggressive about asserting jurisdiction.
Enforcement headlines targeting commodities perpetual contracts or tokenized stocks on the platform will undermine the revenue base that ETF promotions rely on.
The next test is whether ETF inflows can sustain as HYPE’s outperformance this year matures and early buyers consider taking profits.
Bitwise has committed to allocating 10% of BHYP's management fees toward purchasing and staking HYPE on its own balance sheet, creating a structural demand floor tied to assets under management.
Whether this, combined with the protocol’s buyback engine, is sufficient to absorb future unlock-driven selling entirely depends on whether the trading volume figures supporting this argument can continue to materialize.