Bitwise’s HYPE ETF clients add $5M despite token 14% slide

Bitwise’s ETF clients spent $5 million plus on Hyperliquid’s HYPE token last week and have not sold any of it since July. HYPE’s price has dropped by more than 14% over the last 30 days. However, it remains up by 118% YTD.

According to Arkham data, Bitwise is one of the biggest HYPE ETF issuers and hasn’t sold a single token since the end of July. All transactions noted in August were purchases. The information comes from Arkham Explorer and is not an official report from Bitwise, meaning it only conveys the on-chain transactions tied to the company and its investors.

While the amount of money involved is small relative to the total industry, it is the trend that interested Arkham. A firm that takes in tokens continually sends a different message than one that considers outflows against inflows.

A May launch on the NYSE

The fund behind the U.S. purchase is the Bitwise Hyperliquid ETF, which trades under BHYP on the New York Stock Exchange. Bitwise unveiled the fund on May 14, 2026, and it started trading the next day. According to the firm, it is one of the first spot Hyperliquid products available in the U.S. and the first to use its own operations with its staking capability, Bitwise Onchain Solutions.

Bitwise, which noted $11 billion in assets under management as of April 1, 2026, set the sponsor fee at 0.34% and offered no fee for the initial one month on the first $500 million. “Hyperliquid has emerged as one of the most compelling investment opportunities in crypto today,” Matt Hougan said in the announcement of the launch. He linked this to the architecture of HYPE, saying that trading on the platform directly benefits token holders.

Europe got its version first

Bitwise launched a HYPE product in Europe. On April 9, 2026, it listed the Bitwise Hyperliquid Staking ETP (BHYP) on Deutsche Börse Xetra. Bradley Duke, who is the company’s Head of Europe, described the product as “a timely addition” to the company’s European product range and also claimed that it is the seventh such product from Bitwise.

The European ETP follows the Kaiko HYPE Reference Rate LDNLF index and has an annual expense ratio of 0.85%. It aims for a 1.00% net staking reward, with 33% of the staking rewards kept by the issuer for operational expenses. The earnings from staking are acquired daily and repaid, thus increasing the amount of crypto capital owned by each party over time.

Why accumulation matters for HYPE

The buying involves a token that Coinbase Institutional argues behaves less like a typical DeFi asset and more like a claim on exchange revenue. In a March 5, 2026 note, Coinbase researchers explained that Hyperliquid routes protocol fees into an Assistance Fund that converts 97% of them into HYPE buybacks, treating the repurchased tokens as removed supply. The firm pegged annualized fees near $1 billion.

That mechanism is why demand and flow figures carry weight here. Hyperliquid handled $2.9 trillion in trading volume in 2025, a jump of more than 400% year over year, and holds roughly 60% of global on-chain derivative open interest, per Bitwise’s launch figures. HYPE has climbed to the tenth-largest crypto asset by market value, above $11 billion. Whether Bitwise keeps buying through August will show up in Arkham’s data before it shows up anywhere else.

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