Hyperliquid's native token HYPE surged past $62 to reach a new all-time high on Wednesday, posting gains of more than 20% in a single session as a wall of institutional money continued pouring into freshly launched U.S. spot ETFs. The move left most of the crypto market behind, with Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP all sitting deep in negative territory for the year while HYPE climbed more than 100% year-to-date.

 

The immediate catalyst seemed to be record ETF flow data. U.S. spot Hyperliquid ETFs hauled in $25.5 million in net inflows on Wednesday alone, pushing cumulative flows to $53.5 million within just seven trading days of launch. The figures dwarfed anything the funds had seen in their opening sessions, with Monday drawing only $4.4 million and Tuesday logging $11 million before Wednesday's breakout.

 

21Shares and Bitwise Lead the Charge

The 21Shares Hyperliquid ETF, trading under the ticker THYP, led Wednesday's haul with $16.7 million in single-day inflows, up sharply from $5.3 million the day before. Bitwise's BHYP fund, which began trading on May 15, added another $8.8 million. Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas described THYP's volume trajectory as growing "8x over day one," calling it a "really good sign of organic interest."

 

Analysts noted that on a market-cap-adjusted basis, institutions are absorbing HYPE at a faster clip than they did early bitcoin ETFs, something that would have seemed far-fetched a year ago.

 

Bitwise made its conviction known in another way, too. The firm said it plans to use 10% of management fees earned from BHYP to purchase and stake HYPE tokens directly on its own balance sheet. That is a very aggressive endorsement from a major asset manager, and Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan has gone even further, publicly labeling HYPE one of crypto's most mispriced assets even after its 77% run this year. Hougan's thesis centers on Hyperliquid's ambition to serve as a "super app" targeting the $600 trillion global asset market rather than just the $3 trillion crypto sector.

 

Grayscale Accumulates, Goldman Shifts Exposure

The ETF frenzy has drawn in some of the bigger names on Wall Street. Blockchain analytics platforms have flagged wallets linked to Grayscale as having accumulated more than 682,000 HYPE tokens, worth approximately $41.6 million, over the past week. Grayscale is also pursuing regulatory approval for its own Hyperliquid ETF, suggesting the accumulation may serve as pre-positioning ahead of a potential product launch.

 

Goldman Sachs, meanwhile, disclosed in a recent 13F filing that it had exited its positions in Solana and XRP ETFs and rotated into HYPE treasury via Hyperliquid Strategies. The disclosure added fresh fuel to the narrative that institutional capital is starting to concentrate specifically inside the Hyperliquid ecosystem, a trend that is showing up in relative price performance across the large-cap crypto space.

 

The Revenue Model That Really Stands Out

Part of what is drawing this level of attention is Hyperliquid's fee structure. The decentralized trading platform funnels 99% of all fees it generates into token buybacks. Annualized, that comes to roughly $618 million in buyback support, according to DefiLlama data. At the token's current market cap of around $13 to $14 billion, that puts the implied buyback yield at a multiple that some analysts think is still too cheap given the platform's growth rate.

 

Hougan drew a comparison to traditional financial exchanges, noting that Robinhood trades at roughly 37 times earnings and CME at 24 times, neither of which is expanding anywhere near as quickly as Hyperliquid. The argument has gained traction partly because the platform has been quietly broadening its reach. Last week, Coinbase and Circle announced an agreement making Coinbase the official USDC treasury deployer on Hyperliquid, with around 90% of stablecoin reserve yield flowing back to the protocol.

 

Price Discovery Time?

HYPE's prior all-time high sits at $59.37, set in September 2025. The token pushed passed that today, but settled slightly lower around $57.35, we should see another push at the price soon and the question after is whether the ETF-driven momentum is enough to push it through into fresh record territory or whether a wave of profit-taking will cap the move. The token had fallen to near $20 as recently as January 2026, making this a recovery of more than 150% from those lows in just a few months.

 

Retail sentiment has also picked up. Chatter on Stocktwits around Hyperliquid moved into what the platform classifies as "extremely bullish" and "extremely high" volume territory, a dynamic that tends to amplify both upside and downside swings. Veteran crypto trader Arthur Hayes this week reiterated a long-term price target of $150 for HYPE, a call that would require roughly a 2.5x move from current levels.

 

For now, Wall Street seems to be running the show. ETF issuers collectively purchased 2.5 times more HYPE than Hyperliquid's own Assistance Fund acquired and burned over the same period, tightening circulating supply while adding consistent bid-side pressure to markets. We'll see what happens during the next couple of days and if all of this bullish sentiment will push HYPE higher or traders will take profit and wait for another move later.

 

Goldman Sachs has just filed to launch its first Bitcoin ETF marking a shift for the bank that once dismissed crypto, but now wants to compete directly with BlackRock and Fidelity.

 

The new filing positions Goldman as an issuer, creating its own branded Bitcoin product for public trading. The fund will follow a defined outcome structure aimed at managing risk while still providing exposure to Bitcoin’s price movement. That balanced design reflects how banks are attempting to bridge traditional investment principles with the growing demand for digital assets from clients who want regulated access.

 

Goldman also closed a two billion dollar acquisition of Innovator Capital Management just weeks ago, a company that specializes in complex ETF engineering which gave the bank guidance on the type of fund it is now introducing. Regulatory conditions also helped with the Financial Innovation and Technology Act, passed in late 2024, finally gave big banks clear legal ground to sell crypto based investment products without facing the grey areas that stalled previous attempts.

 

Competitive pressure is another factor with Morgan Stanley launching its own spot Bitcoin ETF only days earlier, offering the lowest fees in the market and giving its advisors full clearance to recommend crypto holdings to clients. With that move, Goldman faced a choice between continuing as a buyer of other firms’ funds or entering the field with its own. It chose the latter, signaling that the era of quiet participation is over and the fight for market share among major banks has begun.

 

Not too long ago in 2020, the firm told clients Bitcoin was not investable and compared it to the Dutch tulip mania. By 2024, the firm had quietly become one of the largest institutional holders of crypto ETFs managed by peers, controlling more than two billion dollars across portfolios like BlackRock’s IBIT. 

 

Other large banks have followed a similar path away as Jamie Dimon who once called Bitcoin a fraud, now treats the asset as collateral through Kinexys and integrates stablecoin rewards into retail banking. Larry Fink shifted from criticizing Bitcoin to calling it digital gold, with IBIT growing into the world’s largest Bitcoin fund. Citigroup is building crypto custody infrastructure, Morgan Stanley is expanding access through thousands of advisors, and Bank of America now recommends up to a four percent crypto allocation for diversified portfolios.

 

As Bitcoin pushes back toward the low seventy thousand range, it is starting to peel away from software stocks, with the Bloomberg chart showing Bitcoin turning higher since February while the WCLD software basket has decreased. For years they moved in correlation with one another, but for now they are splitting which makes the arrival of products from firms like Goldman, Morgan Stanley, and others feel less like a late bet on another software proxy and more like a recognition that Bitcoin is carving out its own lane as an asset that deserves attention.

 

Retail has been quiet this cycle, but banks like Goldman, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America rolling out their own Bitcoin products and opening up access on mainstream platforms help everyday investors who don’t know how to use new exchanges or custody setups just to get exposure. Bitcoin starts to show up in the same accounts that already hold index funds and blue chip stocks, with advisors treating it as a small slice of a long term portfolio. That does not remove the risk, but it does change the experience, turning crypto from something that sits on the same pipes and protections that most investors already use.