Grayscale filed an amendment to its Hyperliquid spot ETF registration on April 20, naming Anchorage Digital Bank as the fund's crypto custodian. The move replaces Coinbase Custody, which had been listed as custodian in the earlier draft and has been the default custody partner across most of Grayscale's existing crypto ETF products.
The change was surfaced in a CoinMarketCap post citing the updated filing. Grayscale has not published a separate explanation for the swap.
Anchorage takes Grayscale's custody slot
The amended filing installs Anchorage Digital Bank, N.A. as custodian of the underlying HYPE tokens. That is the same Anchorage that holds a federal bank charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the only crypto-native firm to do so. For an issuer preparing a spot ETF on a newer, riskier asset, that charter is meaningful. It creates a regulated rail with clearly defined capital, audit, and bankruptcy protections that a non-bank custodian cannot match.
Coinbase Custody, the firm's institutional custody arm, is a New York state-chartered trust. That framework is also well understood by the SEC and has been used across most US-listed crypto ETFs. It is not obviously inferior, but it is not a federal bank charter either.
What the swap actually changes
On paper, the functional difference between a state trust custodian and a federal bank custodian is small for a spot ETF. Both segregate client assets, publish audited proof-of-reserves language, and carry insurance programs. In practice the differences show up in insolvency scenarios and in how certain institutional allocators, particularly insurance companies and pension mandates, score counterparty risk.
Anchorage's OCC charter slots it into the same regulatory bucket as a national bank. Insurance-heavy balance sheets often have explicit mandates to hold assets with federally chartered custodians. By swapping Anchorage in, Grayscale widens the universe of institutions that can comfortably allocate to a Hyperliquid ETF without triggering internal risk-policy exceptions.
Coinbase's custody moat shows a crack
Coinbase Custody has held an effective monopoly on US spot crypto ETF custody since the BTC and ETH approvals in 2024. Almost every issuer picked it. That dominance has been a meaningful revenue line for Coinbase, tied directly to the scale of the US spot crypto ETF market.
This Grayscale amendment is the clearest public signal yet that other issuers will diversify custody away from Coinbase when the asset or structure warrants it. Hyperliquid is a layer-one perpetuals platform with a shorter track record than BTC or ETH, and a custodian with federal banking status gives issuers a cleaner story for ETF committees weighing a new-asset filing.
It is one filing, not a trend. But custody is a sticky contract. When an issuer swaps out the custodian during the filing window, the expectation is that the replacement stays through approval and launch.
Hyperliquid's ETF lineup takes shape
Grayscale's amended filing is not the only Hyperliquid ETF in queue. 21Shares filed a second S-1 amendment for its Hyperliquid ETF (ticker THYP) earlier this month, committing to stake up to 70% of its holdings on Nasdaq. Bitwise and Canary Capital have also filed spot Hyperliquid ETF applications.
The SEC's effective review clock for these filings runs into the summer. If one is approved, the issuer with the most institution-friendly custody stack has a structural advantage in gathering AUM on day one. The Anchorage swap reads like a preemptive move to get on that footing before an approval decision arrives.
Broader crypto prices, per the CoinMarketCap snapshot as of April 20, 2026, are modestly green: BTC sits at $75,911 (+1.5% over 24h), ETH at $2,320 (+1.3%), and SOL at $85.75 (+0.7%). The Fear & Greed index reads 55, Neutral. Hyperliquid's native HYPE token has held up through the late-April tape, keeping the ETF race alive rather than stalling on a price crash.
Overview
Grayscale replaced Coinbase Custody with Anchorage Digital Bank as the custodian for its pending Hyperliquid spot ETF. The swap installs a federally chartered bank into the custody seat for a new-asset crypto ETF, widens the set of institutional allocators that can hold the product cleanly, and signals that Coinbase's near-monopoly on US crypto ETF custody is starting to loosen as issuers pick custodians by fit rather than default. The SEC still controls the timeline for the ETF itself.
