Grayscale Sets 0.29% Fee for Hyperliquid Staking ETF, Kicking Off a Price War Among HYPE Issuers

Grayscale filed S-1 Amendment 6 with a 0.29% sponsor fee for its Hyperliquid Staking ETF (HYPG), undercutting 21Shares’ THYP at 0.30% and Bitwise’s BHYP at 0.34% after promotional period.

Grayscale filed Amendment 6 to its S-1 registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Monday for the Grayscale Hyperliquid Staking ETF, disclosing a 0.29% sponsor fee and confirming the proposed ticker HYPG. The fee positions Grayscale below both existing US-listed Hyperliquid ETF competitors.

21Shares’ THYP, which launched on Nasdaq on May 12, carries a 0.30% fee. Bitwise’s BHYP, which launched on NYSE on May 15, charges 0% for the first month as a promotional period before rising to 0.34%. Grayscale’s 0.29% structure undercuts both on a normalized basis, the first material fee competition in what has rapidly become the most successful spot crypto ETF debut category to date.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

Bloomberg Intelligence ETF analyst James Seyffart posted on X Monday that Grayscale’s launch is “imminent.” “When I say imminent, I mean that I am expecting the launch this week,” Seyffart wrote. The Grayscale product also opens the door to staking yield as a future feature: the trust agreement permits Grayscale to stake HYPE tokens for yield subject to regulatory approval, which would differentiate the product from competitors that have not yet activated staking.

The fee war comes against a backdrop of unusually strong early flows. HYPE ETFs have accumulated approximately $132 million in net inflows in their first month, with the products posting their best market-cap absorption ratio of any spot crypto ETF debut: roughly 1.04% of HYPE’s market cap absorbed in the first 10 trading days, well above bitcoin’s 0.59%, ether’s 0.41%, and Solana’s 0.31% at the same stage. Bitwise’s BHYP has emerged as the largest of the two, briefly surpassing 21Shares’ THYP in AUM late last month.

The competition is broader than just Grayscale. VanEck confirmed plans for a HYPE ETF in both the US and Europe, and other issuers are expected to file in the coming weeks. HYPE itself traded at a market cap of approximately $16.1 billion on Monday, making it the 10th-largest cryptocurrency.

With a deep TradFi-meets-DeFi narrative built around onchain perpetuals, prediction markets, and pre-IPO derivatives, the token has become the focal product of the 2026 crypto ETF expansion. Grayscale’s fee positioning is the clearest signal yet that issuers expect meaningful AUM in this product and are willing to compete on price to capture early dollars.