The switch is not a minor administrative update. Custody arrangements determine where an ETF's underlying assets are held and who bears responsibility if something goes wrong. This move also has prior context: Anchorage was added as a secondary custodian for Grayscale's existing GBTC in August 2025, as disclosed in an SEC 8-K, at which point Coinbase remained the primary custodian. The GHYP amendment is a progression of that relationship, elevating Anchorage to sole custodian status on a new product and removing Coinbase entirely. Grayscale has not made any public statement specifically explaining the custodian change; the interpretation of this as a structural counterparty decision is drawn from the filing itself.

Anchorage Digital Bank N.A. is the only federally chartered cryptocurrency bank in the United States, having received its charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) in January 2021. The OCC functions as the primary regulator for national banks, meaning Anchorage operates under the same federal oversight framework as traditional banking institutions. Anchorage also cleared a prior BSA/AML consent order, covering Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money laundering controls, in 2025, strengthening its regulatory standing ahead of this filing wave. Anchorage's OCC-chartered status remains significant, though it is no longer unique in the pipeline: the OCC conditionally approved five additional crypto-focused national trust bank charters in December 2025, including applications from BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Paxos, broadening the pool of federally regulated custody options available to ETF issuers.

In early 2026, Tether made a strategic equity investment in Anchorage at a reported valuation of approximately $4.2 billion, further raising Anchorage's institutional profile at a moment when asset managers are actively selecting custody partners for a new generation of altcoin ETF filings.

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Anchorage Now Holds Three of Four HYPE ETF Custody Slots

Based on a Verse Press analysis of publicly available filing details, Grayscale's amendment makes Anchorage the named custodian across three of the four known spot HYPE ETF applications currently before the SEC. Bitwise has filed for a HYPE ETF under the ticker BHYP on NYSE Arca, with Anchorage as custodian and a disclosed management fee of 0.67% annually. 21Shares has filed for a product under the ticker THYP on Nasdaq, naming both Anchorage and BitGo Bank and Trust as dual custodians, and it has proposed staking between 30% and 70% of holdings. VanEck has a filing in progress but has not yet disclosed custodian details.

The pattern mirrors a broader shift away from Coinbase's near-monopoly on crypto ETF custody. Before 2025, analysts and regulators estimated that more than 80% of Bitcoin ETF assets were held at Coinbase Custody, a concentration that had been flagged as a systemic vulnerability.

BlackRock's decision in April 2025 to add Anchorage as a secondary custodian for its Bitcoin ETF IBIT, which held approximately $45 billion in assets under management at the time, was the first major institutional signal that this concentration was being actively reduced. Grayscale's GHYP amendment takes that logic further by removing Coinbase entirely from the new product.

Commenting on the BlackRock arrangement in April 2025, Nathan McCauley, co-founder and CEO of Anchorage Digital, said the company was "excited by the opportunity to set a new standard for tailored access to the digital asset class."

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What Is Hyperliquid, and Why Does It Have a Market Cap of $11 Billion?

Hyperliquid is a Layer-1 blockchain purpose-built for high-speed decentralised trading, with a particular focus on perpetual futures contracts. Perpetual futures are derivative instruments with no expiry date, widely used by traders to gain leveraged exposure to crypto assets. As of April 20, 2026, the HYPE token trades at approximately $43.98, giving it a market capitalisation of around $11.24 billion and a 24-hour trading volume of about $198 million.

Hyperliquid currently accounts for roughly 44% of the decentralised perpetual derivatives market, with open interest standing at $5.15 billion. Its closest competitor, rival perp DEX Aster, holds open interest of approximately $899 million. The platform generated around $52.7 million in protocol revenue over the past 30 days and has roughly 1.89 million total users.

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Regional Context: What This Means for Traders Outside the US

For users in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, where Hyperliquid already operates without KYC requirements across more than 180 countries, the ETF filings do not change on-chain access. Traders in Nigeria, Kenya, India, and Bangladesh can already hold and trade HYPE directly through self-custody wallets. Developers building on HyperEVM enjoy the same frictionless environment: Hyperliquid's permissionless architecture means builders across South Asia face no custodial gatekeeping, regardless of how the ETF approval process unfolds. The more immediate effect is reputational: a formal ETF filing race involving Grayscale, Bitwise, 21Shares, and VanEck signals to local regulators and institutional allocators that HYPE meets a threshold of credibility that domestic regulators may find harder to dismiss. India's SEBI has not approved spot crypto ETFs, and restrictive frameworks persist in Pakistan and Bangladesh. South Africa is a partial exception, as the FSCA has approved crypto-related investment products, and South African investors may be able to access a US-listed HYPE ETF through international brokerage platforms. Regional investors should also note that Anchorage Digital does not currently have a stated operational presence in Africa or South Asia, which is relevant context for evaluating the counterparty profile of ETF products built on its custody infrastructure.

One near-term data point worth watching regardless of geography is an upcoming token unlock on May 6, when approximately 9.92 million HYPE tokens (about 1% of total supply, valued near $443 million at current prices) are scheduled to be released to core contributors. Unlock events of this size can create short-term selling pressure.

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Looking Ahead

No review timeline for any of the HYPE ETF applications has been publicly announced by the SEC.

Grayscale's regulatory track record with GBTC, which it converted into a spot ETF in early 2024 following its 2023 DC Circuit court win against the SEC, gives it experience navigating the approval process. Whether Anchorage's federally chartered status and cleared compliance record prove decisive in the SEC's evaluation remains to be seen, but the concentration of HYPE custody at a single federally regulated institution is likely to feature in the asset managers' approval cases. For on-chain users and developers globally, including the millions already trading and building on Hyperliquid across Asia and Africa without intermediaries, the pace of that regulatory process will shape how quickly institutional demand can reach a network that is already open and permissionless to anyone who wants it.