HYPE has surged 101% year to date while bitcoin is down 12% over the same period, a divergence that deepened Wednesday when Hyperliquid’s two U.S.-listed spot ETFs recorded a single-day record of $25.5 million in net inflows, according to Farside data.

That figure is 17 times the protocol’s daily Assistance Fund burn of roughly $1.4 million and exceeds the first five days of inflows combined ($22.35 million: $1.17M + $1.36M + $4.36M + $4.42M + $11.04M). Cumulative net inflows have reached $54 million in just seven trading days since launch.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

21Shares’ THYP led Wednesday with $16.7 million, up from $5.3 million the day before. Bitwise’s BHYP, which began trading May 14, recorded $8.8 million. Peter Chung, head of research at Presto Labs, told The Block that “institutions appear to be seizing the opportunity: early data shows they are piling into HYPE ETFs faster than they did into BTC ETFs on a market-cap-adjusted basis.” Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas called the THYP volume trajectory “a really good sign of organic interest.”

HYPE traded at $55.91 Thursday, up 17.3% in 24 hours, with a market cap of roughly $13.4 billion. Its fully diluted valuation briefly hit $54.7 billion on Wednesday, surpassing Solana’s FDV of $54.2 billion for the first time, according to CoinGecko data. HYPE’s all-time high of $59.3 was set in September 2025.

The answer to this divergence lies in the exchange’s fundamentals and diverse revenue streams. Hyperliquid has generated roughly $255 million in revenue year to date, more than the next two protocols combined, per Decrypt. Approximately 97% of trading fees are funneled into daily open-market HYPE buybacks, creating structural buy-side demand that compounds with ETF inflows. Bitwise has committed to allocating 10% of its ETF management fee to buying and staking HYPE directly, adding another layer of programmatic demand. RWA open interest on the platform has passed $2 billion, and the network generates roughly $896 million in annualized revenue with fewer than 20 employees.