BASED Catches a Bid as Three Asset Managers Race to Launch a HYPE ETF

The [HYPE](/movers/hype) ETF Race

Three major asset managers are now competing to launch the first US spot Hyperliquid ETF, and the filings are accelerating.

21Shares filed Amendment No. 2 to its S-1 on April 14, confirming the fund will list on Nasdaq under the ticker THYP. The amended filing names Anchorage Digital Bank and BitGo as joint custodians, with Figment engaged to stake 30–70% of the trust's HYPE holdings — meaning ETF buyers would earn staking yield, a structural novelty for a crypto spot fund filing. Bitwise amended its own S-1 the same week, locking in the ticker BHYP with a 0.67% annual fee and an NYSE Arca listing. Grayscale filed for GHYP on March 21 with Coinbase Custody as custodian. A European HYPE ETP is already live.

The market is pricing in the attention. HYPE hit $44.38 on April 15, putting the token's market cap at $11.37 billion. BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes bought 26,022 HYPE tokens (~$1.1 million) — his first major purchase in three months.

Commodity Perps and the Revenue Story

The ETF filings aren't happening in a vacuum. Hyperliquid's revenue is accelerating because traders discovered they can trade oil perps 24/7 on a crypto exchange while traditional commodity markets are closed.

Oil perpetuals briefly dethroned Bitcoin as Hyperliquid's most-traded market in early April, with WTI and Brent combined volume hitting $3.27 billion in a single day after the failed US-Iran nuclear talks on April 12. Total commodity perp volume has been running above $800 million daily since mid-April, driven by Strait of Hormuz blockade headlines and the need for round-the-clock hedging that CME can't offer.

All of this activity runs through HIP-3, Hyperliquid's framework for builder-deployed perpetuals — the same infrastructure that powers the hyna:BASED perp market. The protocol revenue that commodity perps generate is a core part of the HYPE investment thesis that asset managers are underwriting with their ETF filings.

BASED as Ecosystem Beta

BASED doesn't have a token-specific catalyst here. What it has is a structural link to the Hyperliquid ecosystem that makes it one of the most sensitive proxies for HYPE momentum.

The Based team built Hyena, a USDe-margined perpetual DEX that operates as one of Hyperliquid's most active HIP-3 builders. Hyena's documentation describes Based as "the largest Hyperliquid app by revenue" — meaning the team that controls the BASED token is also a significant source of the platform activity that's driving the ETF narrative.

At $0.0866 on the perp, BASED is still down 44% from its March 30 TGE price of $0.155. The token launched with 240 million tokens immediately circulating, and the post-TGE distribution overhang ground it to an all-time low of $0.050 on April 11. The recovery from that low has been steady but uneven, with BASED bouncing between $0.065 and $0.10 over the past four days as broader ecosystem flows rotate through.

The near-term supply calendar matters: Season 3 runs until May 4 with 50 million tokens claimable on May 11, adding 5% to circulating supply. Investor and contributor tokens remain locked until March 2027, so the unlock pressure for now is manageable — but each season airdrop adds incremental selling weight.

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