Bitwise, the crypto asset manager behind several spot crypto exchange-traded funds, said it will put part of the fee income from its Hyperliquid ETF into HYPE, using the same "community pledge" playbook it has used before, but this time the money goes onto its own balance sheet.
The company announced in a May 18 post on X that it will devote 10% of the Bitwise Hyperliquid ETF's management fee to holding HYPE, the token used by Hyperliquid, a decentralized crypto exchange and blockchain best known for perpetual futures trading.
The fund, the Bitwise Hyperliquid ETF, trades under the ticker BHYP and began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on May 15 with a 0.34% sponsor fee, waived for the first month on the first $500 million in assets.
For BITB, its spot Bitcoin ETF, the company pledged 10% of gross profits to Bitcoin open-source developers for at least 10 years.
For ETHW, its spot Ethereum ETF, Bitwise pledged 10% of profits to Ethereum open-source development. Those plans funded outside developer groups, while the HYPE plan is different because Bitwise says it will hold the token itself.
The move comes as the early U.S. HYPE ETF market is still small. The Swiss crypto ETP issuer 21Shares launched its own U.S. Hyperliquid ETF, THYP, on Nasdaq earlier in May, with first-day trading volume of about $1.8 million and net inflows of about $1.2 million.
James Seyffart, a Bloomberg ETF analyst who tracks crypto funds, called the THYP debut "very solid" and "better than your average ETF launch," while adding it was "nothing too crazy."