The cryptocurrency industry is stirring up a repurchase frenzy, and tokens are gradually acquiring the attribute of “shareholder rights representation”.

Seven years ago, a tech giant accomplished a financial feat whose impact even surpassed the company's most outstanding products. In April 2017, this company launched a $5 billion new campus in California; a year later, in May 2018, the company announced a $100 billion stock buyback plan—an amount 20 times its investment in the new headquarters campus. This sent a core message to the world: besides its flagship product, it has another “product” of equal importance.

This was the largest stock buyback program in the world at the time, and it was part of the company's decade-long buyback craze. During this period, over $725 billion was spent to repurchase its own shares. Six years later, in May 2024, the company broke the record again and announced a $110 billion buyback plan. This operation proves that the company not only knows how to create scarcity in hardware devices but also understands the same principles in stock operations.

Today, the cryptocurrency industry is adopting similar strategies, with a faster pace and larger scale.

The two major “revenue engines” in the industry - the perpetual futures exchange Hyperliquid and the meme coin issuance platform Pump.fun - are using almost every penny of their fee income to buy back their own Tokens.

Hyperliquid set a record of $106 million in transaction fees in August 2025, with over 90% used to repurchase HYPE tokens in the open market. Meanwhile, Pump.fun's daily income briefly exceeded Hyperliquid — on a day in September 2025, the platform's single-day income reached $3.38 million. Where does this income ultimately go? The answer is 100% used to repurchase PUMP tokens. In fact, this repurchase model has been ongoing for more than two months.

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This operation gradually gives encryption tokens the attributes of “shareholder rights proxy”—which is rare in the cryptocurrency field, as tokens in this domain are often sold off to investors at the first opportunity.

The logic behind it is that cryptocurrency projects are trying to replicate the long-term successful path of traditional financial market “dividend aristocrats”: these companies spend huge amounts to return to shareholders through stable cash dividends or stock buybacks. Taking a certain tech giant as an example, its stock buyback amount reached $104 billion in 2024, accounting for about 3%-4% of its market value at that time; while Hyperliquid achieved a “circulation offset ratio” of up to 9% through buybacks.

Even by the standards of traditional stock markets, such numbers are astonishing; in the field of encryption, they are unprecedented.

Hyperliquid's positioning is very clear: it has created a decentralized perpetual futures exchange that combines the smooth experience of centralized exchanges while operating entirely on-chain. The platform supports zero Gas fees and high leverage trading, and is a Layer1 focused on perpetual contracts. By mid-2025, its monthly trading volume had exceeded $400 billion, capturing about 70% of the DeFi perpetual contract market.

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What truly sets Hyperliquid apart is its approach to fund utilization.

The platform allocates over 90% of its fee income to the “Assistance Fund” every day, and these funds will be used directly to purchase HYPE Tokens in the open market.

As of the writing of this article, the fund has accumulated over 31.61 million HYPE Tokens, valued at about 1.4 billion dollars—a tenfold increase from 3 million in January 2025.

This repurchase frenzy reduced the circulating supply of HYPE by about 9%, driving the price of the Token to a peak of 60 dollars in mid-September 2025.

Meanwhile, Pump.fun has reduced the circulation of PUMP Tokens by approximately 7.5% through buybacks.

This platform transforms the “Meme coin craze” into a sustainable business model with extremely low fees: anyone can issue tokens and build a “binding curve” on the platform, allowing market enthusiasm to ferment freely. What started as a “joke tool” has now become a “production factory” for speculative assets.

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But hidden dangers also exist.

The income of Pump.fun exhibits a significant cyclical pattern—because its revenue is directly tied to the popularity of Meme coin issuance. In July 2025, the platform's income fell to $17.11 million, the lowest level since April 2024, and the buyback scale was also reduced; by August, the monthly income had risen again to over $41.05 million.

However, “sustainability” remains an unresolved issue. When the “Meme Season” cools down (which has happened in the past and will inevitably happen in the future), Token buybacks will also shrink accordingly. More critically, the platform is facing a lawsuit amounting to $5.5 billion, with the plaintiffs accusing its business of being “similar to illegal gambling.”

The core that supports Hyperliquid and Pump.fun at present is their willingness to “return profits to the community.”

A certain tech giant once returned nearly 90% of its profits to shareholders through buybacks and dividends in certain years, but these decisions were mostly phase-based “batch announcements”; whereas Hyperliquid and Pump.fun continuously return almost 100% of their revenue to Token holders every day - this model is sustainable.

Of course, there are essential differences between the two: cash dividends represent “tangible income”, which, although taxable, offer strong stability; whereas buybacks are at most a “price support tool”—once income declines or the amount of unlocked tokens far exceeds the buyback volume, the effectiveness of buybacks will diminish. Hyperliquid is facing the impending “unlock shock”, while Pump.fun must deal with the risk of “Meme coin popularity shift”. Compared to a certain pharmaceutical company's record of “63 years of continuous dividend increases” or a certain tech giant's long-term stable buyback strategy, the operations of these two crypto platforms resemble “walking a tightrope at high altitude”.

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But perhaps, this is already difficult in the encryption industry.

Cryptocurrency is still in its development maturity phase and has not yet formed a stable business model, but it has already shown an astonishing “development speed”. The buyback strategy just has the elements to accelerate the industry: flexibility, tax efficiency, and deflationary properties—these characteristics are highly aligned with the “speculation-driven” crypto market. To date, this strategy has transformed two projects with completely different positioning into top “revenue machines” in the industry.

Whether this model can be sustained in the long term is still inconclusive. However, it is evident that it has, for the first time, freed encryption tokens from the label of “casino chips” and brought them closer to “company stocks that can generate returns for holders”—the speed of returns may even put pressure on traditional technology companies.

This contains a deeper revelation: a certain tech giant realized even before the emergence of cryptocurrency that it is selling not just hardware products, but its own stocks. Since 2012, the company has spent nearly $1 trillion on share buybacks (more than the GDP of most countries), and the circulating volume of its stocks has decreased by over 40%.

The company's market value remains above $3.8 trillion, partly because it views its stocks as “products that require marketing, polishing, and maintaining scarcity.” The company does not need to raise funds through issuing additional stocks—its balance sheet is cash-rich, so the stocks themselves have become “products,” and shareholders have become “customers.”

This logic is gradually permeating the cryptocurrency field.

The success of Hyperliquid and Pump.fun lies in the fact that they do not use the cash generated from their business for reinvestment or hoarding, but instead convert it into “purchasing power that boosts the demand for their own Token.”

This has also changed investors' perceptions of encryption assets.

The hardware sales of a certain tech giant are undoubtedly important, but investors who are optimistic about the company know that its stock has another “engine”: scarcity. Nowadays, traders are also beginning to form a similar understanding regarding HYPE and PUMP tokens — in their eyes, these assets come with a clear commitment: every transaction or consumption based on these tokens has more than a 95% probability of being converted into “market buybacks and destruction”.

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But the case of a certain tech giant also reveals another aspect: the strength of buybacks always depends on the intensity of the cash flow behind it. What happens if revenue declines? When the sales of the company's main products slow down, its strong balance sheet allows it to fulfill buyback commitments through issuing bonds; however, Hyperliquid and Pump.fun do not have such a “buffer”—once trading volume shrinks, buybacks will also come to a halt. More importantly, traditional tech companies can turn to dividends, service businesses, or new products to cope with crises, while these encryption protocols currently have no “backup plan”.

For cryptocurrencies, there is also the risk of “Token dilution.”

A certain tech giant need not worry about “200 million new shares flooding the market overnight,” but Hyperliquid faces this issue: starting from November 2025, HYPE Tokens worth nearly $12 billion will be unlocked for insiders, a scale far exceeding the daily buyback volume.

Traditional companies can independently control the circulation of stocks, while encryption protocols are subject to the token unlocking schedule that was “written in black and white” years ago.

Even so, investors still see the value in it and are eager to participate. The strategy of a certain tech giant is obvious, especially to those familiar with its decades-long development history—the company has cultivated shareholder loyalty by transforming its stocks into “financial products.” Nowadays, Hyperliquid and Pump.fun are trying to replicate this path in the encryption space, only with a faster pace, greater momentum, and higher risks.

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