HYPE Breaks Above $60 as New Spot ETFs Spark Institutional Buying

Hyperliquid's native token HYPE surged more than 20% over the past 24 hours to about $61.35, according to The Block's price data cited by CoinDesk. HYPE last topped out near $58.50 in September and later slid to roughly $21 in early 2026. Thursday's jump made it the best performer among the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. Other gainers included Mantle's MNT (up about 9%), Zcash (ZEC) (up 7%), and Worldcoin (WLD) (up 8%). Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP were little changed, each down less than 1% on the day. The rally follows the launch of spot HYPE exchange-traded funds by Bitwise and 21Shares earlier this month, as Wall Street demand for highly liquid crypto exposure continues to build. U.S. spot high-liquidity ETFs pulled in record inflows: fresh subscriptions totaled $25.5 million, bringing cumulative inflows to about $54 million over the first seven trading days, The Block data show. The 21Shares Hyperliquid ETF (ticker: THYP) led with $16.7 million of daily inflows, while Bitwise's BHYP added $8.8 million. Peter Chung, head of research at Presto Research, said institutional investors appear to be moving quickly. He noted early data suggest that, on a market-cap-adjusted basis, flows into the HYPE ETF are outpacing the initial pace seen in spot bitcoin ETFs. On-chain data also point to accumulation. Lookonchain reported that wallets linked to Grayscale bought about 115,700 HYPE tokens within an hour on Thursday, valued near $7 million. Over the past week, those wallets accumulated more than 682,000 HYPE tokens, worth about $41.6 million. Grayscale has also filed to launch its own spot high-liquidity ETF this year. Separately, Bitwise said Monday it will use 10% of the management fees generated by BHYP to buy HYPE tokens, and plans to post those holdings as collateral on its balance sheet.