Crypto Assets industry adopts stock repurchase strategy, showing significant effects but risks remain.

Seven years ago, a tech giant accomplished a financial feat whose impact even surpassed the company’s most outstanding products. In April 2017, the company opened a new headquarters campus in California that cost $5 billion; a year later, the company announced a $100 billion stock buyback plan, which was 20 times the investment in its headquarters. This sent an important signal to the world: in addition to its flagship products, the company has another equally important "product".

This was the largest stock buyback program in the world at the time and was part of the company's decade-long buyback spree. During this period, the company spent over $725 billion repurchasing its own shares. Six years later, in May 2024, the company broke the record again by announcing an $110 billion buyback plan. This operation proves that the company not only knows how to create scarcity in hardware devices but is also well-versed in operations at the stock level.

Today, the Crypto Assets industry is adopting similar strategies, and at a faster pace and larger scale.

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

Hyperliquid set a record of $106 million in fee revenue in August 2025, of which over 90% was used to repurchase HYPE coins on the open market. Meanwhile, Pump.fun's daily revenue briefly exceeded Hyperliquid's — on a certain day in September 2025, the platform's single-day revenue reached $3.38 million. All of this revenue was ultimately used to repurchase PUMP coins, and this repurchase model has been ongoing for more than two months.

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This operation gradually gives crypto assets the attributes of "shareholder rights agency", which is rare in the field of crypto assets, as tokens in this field are often sold off to investors at the first opportunity.

The logic behind this is that Crypto Assets projects are trying to replicate the successful path of traditional enterprises over the long term: returning huge sums to shareholders through stable cash dividends or stock buybacks. For example, a certain tech giant had a stock buyback amount of $104 billion in 2024, accounting for approximately 3%-4% of its market value at the time; while Hyperliquid achieved a "circulation offset ratio" of up to 9% through buybacks.

Even by the standards of traditional stock markets, such figures are astonishing; in the realm of Crypto Assets, they are unprecedented.

Hyperliquid has a very clear positioning: it has created a decentralized perpetual futures exchange that offers the smooth experience of a centralized exchange, yet operates entirely on-chain. The platform supports zero gas fees and high leverage trading, and is a Layer 1 focused on perpetual contracts. By mid-2025, its monthly trading volume has exceeded $400 billion, capturing about 70% of the DeFi perpetual contract market.

What truly sets Hyperliquid apart is its way of utilizing funds.

The platform allocates over 90% of its fee income to the "Assistance Fund" every day, and this fund will be directly used to purchase HYPE tokens on the open market.

As of the writing of this article, the fund has accumulated over 31.61 million HYPE coins, worth approximately 1.4 billion USD—an increase of 10 times from 3 million coins in January 2025.

This buyback frenzy reduced the circulating supply of HYPE by about 9%, driving the price of the token to peak at $60 in mid-September 2025.

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Meanwhile, Pump.fun has reduced the circulation of PUMP coins 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 on the platform and build "bonding curves", allowing market enthusiasm to ferment freely. This platform, which was initially just a "joke tool", has now become a "production factory" for speculative assets.

But hidden dangers also exist.

The income of Pump.fun shows a clear cyclicality—because its income is directly linked to the popularity of Meme coin issuance. In July 2025, the platform's income fell to 17.11 million dollars, the lowest level since April 2024, and the buyback scale was also reduced accordingly; by August, the monthly income had risen again to over 41.05 million dollars.

However, "sustainability" remains an unresolved issue. When the "Meme season" cools down (which has happened in the past and will inevitably happen again), token buybacks will also contract. More seriously, the platform is facing a lawsuit amounting to $5.5 billion, with the plaintiffs accusing its business of being "similar to illegal gambling."

At the heart of Hyperliquid's current support for Pump.fun is their willingness to "give back the benefits to the community".

A certain tech giant has returned nearly 90% of its profits to shareholders through buybacks and dividends in some years, but these decisions are mostly phase-based "bulk announcements"; whereas Hyperliquid and Pump.fun continuously return almost 100% of their income to token holders every day—this model is sustainable.

Of course, there is still an essential difference between the two: cash dividends are "income in hand", which is tax-payable but stable; At best, buybacks are a "price support tool" – if revenue declines, or if the amount of tokens unlocked far exceeds the buyback volume, the effect of the buyback will be invalidated. Hyperliquid is facing an imminent "unlock shock", and Pump.fun needs to deal with the risk of "meme coin heat shift". Compared with a company's record of "63 years of continuous dividend increases", or a tech giant's long-term and stable buyback strategy, the operation of these two crypto platforms is more like a "tightrope walk".

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But perhaps, this is not easy in the Crypto Assets industry.

Crypto Assets are still in the development maturity period and have not yet formed a stable business model, but they have already demonstrated an astonishing "development speed". The repurchase strategy happens to have the elements that drive the industry acceleration: flexibility, tax efficiency, and deflationary attributes—these characteristics are highly compatible with the "speculation-driven" crypto market. So far, this strategy has transformed two projects with completely different positions into top "income machines" in the industry.

Whether this model can be sustained in the long term is still uncertain. However, it is evident that it has for the first time freed crypto assets from the label of "casino chips," bringing them closer to "company stocks that can generate returns for holders"—its return speed may even put pressure on traditional enterprises.

I believe there is a deeper insight behind this: a certain tech giant realized long before the emergence of Crypto Assets that it was selling not just hardware devices, but also its own stock. Since 2012, the company has spent nearly $1 trillion on buybacks (more than the GDP of most countries), reducing the circulation of its stock by more than 40%.

The company's market value still remains above $3.8 trillion today, partly because it views its stocks as "products that need to be marketed, polished, and maintained for scarcity." The company does not need to raise funds through issuing more stocks—its balance sheet is cash-rich, so the stocks themselves have become "products," and the shareholders have become "customers."

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This logic is gradually permeating the Crypto Assets field.

The success of Hyperliquid and Pump.fun lies in the fact that they did not use the cash generated from their business for reinvestment or hoarding, but rather transformed it into "purchasing power that boosts the demand for their own tokens".

This has also changed investors' perceptions of Crypto Assets.

The sales of products from a certain tech giant are certainly important, but investors who are optimistic about the company know that its stock has another "engine": scarcity. Nowadays, for HYPE and PUMP tokens, traders are beginning to form a similar understanding — these assets in their eyes have a clear promise behind them: each consumption or transaction based on this token has over a 95% probability of being converted into "market buyback and destruction".

But the cases of traditional enterprises also reveal another side: the intensity of buybacks always depends on the strength of the cash flow behind them. What happens if revenue declines? When the sales of a flagship product slow down, a certain tech giant's strong balance sheet allows it to fulfill its buyback commitments through bond issuance; whereas Hyperliquid and Pump.fun do not have such a "buffer" — once trading volume shrinks, buybacks will also come to a halt. More importantly, traditional enterprises can turn to dividends, service businesses, or new products to respond to crises, while these encryption protocols currently have no "backup plans."

There is also a risk of "token dilution" when it comes to cryptocurrencies.

A certain tech giant does not need to 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 repurchase volume.

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Traditional enterprises can independently control the circulation of stocks, while encryption protocols are subject to token unlocking schedules that have been "set in stone" 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." Today, Hyperliquid and Pump.fun are trying to replicate this path in the Crypto Assets field, only at a faster pace, with greater momentum, and higher risks.

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