ETF FOMO Goes Brrr: Grayscale Chugs the HYPE Kool-Aid, BlackRock Plays Hot Potato with Custody, and Morgan Stanley Eyes a 'Monster' Bag

Not to be outdone, Grayscale has thrown its hat into the ring, filing an S-1 with the SEC for a spot Hyperliquid ETF. This puts them in the race alongside Bitwise and 21Shares, all chasing a product pegged to the Hyperliquid protocol. If the SEC ever stops hitting the snooze button, the Grayscale HYPE ETF would track the HYPE token and trade under the depressingly uncreative ticker GHYP on Nasdaq. Grayscale penciled in Coinbase as its custodian and left a little "maybe later" note about staking rewards, a classic case of filing first and figuring out the yield farming details while the printer is still warm.

Despite new kids on the block like Aster and Lighter trying to crash the perpetuals party in 2025, Hyperliquid isn't sweating. The protocol continues to casually post weekly trading volume between $40 billion and $100 billion, which, for those keeping score at home, is more than the GDP of some small nations. It remains the undisputed heavyweight champ of perps trading, proving that sometimes the first-mover advantage actually sticks.

In a separate but equally degen corner of the institutional zoo, Phong Le, CEO of Strategy, looked at Morgan Stanley's proposed bitcoin ETF (ticker MSBT) and basically called it a 'Monster Bitcoin' bet. His napkin math is terrifying for bears: Morgan Stanley's wealth management arm babysits about $8 trillion in assets and suggests a 0–4% bitcoin allocation. A mere 2% nibble from that pie would represent a cool $160 billion in potential demand, or as we call it in crypto, Tuesday.

Morgan Stanley's amended S-1 filing lays out the blueprint for its spot bitcoin ETF, destined for the NYSE Arca if approved. The custody game plan is a classic institutional hand-off: BNY Mellon will hold the boring old cash, while Coinbase gets the fun job of guarding the actual magic internet money.

Not to be left out of the weekly custody shuffle, BlackRock executed a classic "not your keys" maneuver, transferring roughly $140 million in crypto—47,728 ETH (≈$102m) and 544 BTC (≈$38.3m)—to Coinbase Prime on March 20. This timely deposit coincided neatly with market data flashing warning signs of significant liquidation risk for BTC below $66,827 and for ETH below $2,029. A coincidence, surely.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin ETFs have been putting on a volume spectacle worthy of a Wall Street circus. The four highest daily trading volumes in history all decided to show up in the past four weeks like uninvited party guests: $31.6 billion on March 2, $23.2 billion on February 23, $21.4 billion on March 18, and $21.1 billion on March 19. This frenzy happened as Bitcoin's price did its best impression of a slow-motion slide, drifting from around $74,000 to below $70,000. With net flows turning slightly negative on March 18 and 19, the message is clear: this isn't just diamond-handed buying; it's whales playing a high-stakes game of musical chairs with billions.