The cryptocurrency industry is adopting buyback strategies from traditional finance, but at a faster pace and with higher risk. Perpetual futures exchange Hyperliquid and meme coin launchpad Pump.fun are using almost all their fee revenue to buy back their own tokens, boosting token prices and reducing circulating supply.

Hyperliquid & Pump.fun: The Buyback Giants

Hyperliquid: This decentralized perpetual futures exchange boasts monthly trading volumes exceeding $400 billion, capturing about 70% of the DeFi perp market. The platform allocates over 90% of its fee income to buy back HYPE tokens, with cumulative buybacks worth approximately $1.4 billion, reducing the circulating supply by about 9%.

Pump.fun: Known for enabling meme coin launches with minimal fees, its daily revenue once hit $3.38 million. The platform uses 100% of its revenue to repurchase PUMP tokens, decreasing the circulating supply by around 7.5%.

Risks and Challenges

Revenue is highly cyclical. Pump.fun is susceptible to the volatility of meme coin trends, while Hyperliquid faces an impending "unlock shock," with HYPE tokens worth $12 billion set to unlock in November 2025.

Lacking the financial buffers of traditional firms like Apple, buybacks could stall immediately if revenue declines.

Pump.fun also faces a $5.5 billion lawsuit alleging its operations resemble illegal gambling.

Despite the high risks, this model brings crypto tokens closer to "shareholder equity," creating returns for holders through continuous buybacks and shifting market perceptions of crypto assets.

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Summary

Seven years ago, Apple accomplished a financial feat whose impact arguably surpassed even its finest products. In April 2017, Apple opened its $5 billion "Apple Park" campus in Cupertino, California. Just over a year later, in May 2018, the company announced a $100 billion stock buyback plan – an amount 20 times its investment in the 360-acre "Spaceship" headquarters. This signaled Apple's core message: beyond the iPhone, it had another "product" whose importance rivaled, or perhaps even surpassed, the iPhone itself.

It was the largest stock buyback plan at the time, part of Apple's decade-long buyback spree during which it spent over $725 billion repurchasing its own shares. A full six years later, in May 2024, the iPhone maker broke records again, announcing a $110 billion repurchase program. This demonstrated that Apple understood how to create scarcity not just with hardware, but also with its own stock.

Today, the cryptocurrency industry is adopting a similar strategy, but faster and on a different scale.

Two of the industry's "revenue engines" – perpetual futures exchange Hyperliquid and meme coin launchpad Pump.fun – are funneling almost every cent of fee revenue into buying back their native tokens.

The Mechanics of Crypto Buybacks

Hyperliquid set a record with $106 million in fee revenue in August 2025, over 90% of which was used to buy back HYPE tokens on the open market. Meanwhile, Pump.fun's daily revenue briefly surpassed Hyperliquid's, hitting $3.38 million in a single day in September 2025. Where does this revenue go? The answer is 100% allocated to repurchasing PUMP tokens. This buyback model has now been ongoing for over two months.

This practice is granting crypto tokens a quality akin to a "proxy for shareholder equity" – a rarity in a space where tokens are often dumped on investors at the first opportunity.

The underlying logic is that crypto projects are trying to replicate the long-successful path of Wall Street's "dividend aristocrats" (like Apple, Procter & Gamble, and Coca-Cola): companies that return significant value to shareholders through steady cash dividends or stock buybacks. For instance, Apple's stock buybacks in 2024 reached $104 billion, roughly 3%-4% of its market cap at the time; whereas Hyperliquid achieved a "circulating supply reduction rate" of 9% through buybacks.

Even by traditional stock market standards, such figures are impressive; in the crypto world, they are unprecedented.

Hyperliquid: The DeFi Perpetuals Powerhouse

Hyperliquid's positioning is clear: it has built a decentralized perpetual futures exchange that offers the smooth experience of a centralized exchange (like Binance) but operates entirely on-chain. The platform supports zero gas fees, high-leverage trading, and is a Layer1 blockchain centered around perpetual contracts. By mid-2025, its monthly trading volume exceeded $400 billion, capturing about 70% of the DeFi perp market.

What truly sets Hyperliquid apart is its use of capital.

The platform directs over 90% of its daily fee income into a "Succor Fund," which is used directly to purchase HYPE tokens on the open market.

At the time of writing, this fund holds over 31.61 million HYPE tokens, valued at approximately $1.4 billion – a tenfold increase from 3 million tokens in January 2025.

This buyback frenzy has reduced the circulating supply of HYPE by about 9%, helping push the token's price to a peak of $60 in mid-September 2025.

Pump.fun: Capitalizing on the Meme Coin Mania

Meanwhile, Pump.fun has reduced the circulating supply of PUMP tokens by approximately 7.5% through its buybacks.

This platform has turned the "meme coin frenzy" into a sustainable business model with minimal fees: anyone can launch a token, set up a "bonding curve," and let market hype take over. What started as a "joke tool" has become a "factory" for speculative assets.

But pitfalls exist.

Inherent Risks and Sustainability Concerns

Pump.fun's revenue is notably cyclical – directly tied to the popularity of meme coin launches. In July 2025, its revenue fell to $17.11 million, the lowest since April 2024, leading to smaller buybacks; by August, monthly revenue had recovered to over $41.05 million.

However, "sustainability" remains an open question. When the "Meme Season" cools down (as it has before and inevitably will again), token buybacks will shrink. More critically, the platform faces a $5.5 billion lawsuit where plaintiffs allege its business is "similar to illegal gambling."

Comparing Philosophies: Apple vs. Crypto

The core support for Hyperliquid and Pump.fun currently lies in their willingness to "return yields to the community."

Apple, in some years, returned nearly 90% of its profits to shareholders via buybacks and dividends, but these decisions were often phased "batch announcements." In contrast, Hyperliquid and Pump.fun continuously return almost 100% of their revenue to token holders daily – this model is persistent.

Of course, fundamental differences remain: cash dividends are "realized income," stable albeit taxable; whereas buybacks are, at best, "price support tools" – their effect vanishes if revenue declines or token unlocks vastly outpace buybacks. Hyperliquid faces an upcoming "unlock shock," while Pump.fun must contend with the risk of "meme coin hype shifting." Compared to Johnson & Johnson's record of "63 consecutive years of dividend increases" or Apple's long-standing, stable buyback strategy, these crypto platforms' operations are more like "walking a tightrope."

But perhaps, in the crypto industry, this is already an achievement.

The Accelerated Crypto Model

Cryptocurrency is still maturing and hasn't yet established stable business models, but it has demonstrated astonishing "development speed." Buyback strategies恰好 possess elements that fuel this acceleration: flexibility, tax efficiency, deflationary properties – traits highly compatible with the "speculation-driven" crypto market. So far, this strategy has transformed two entirely different projects into top-tier "revenue machines" in the industry.

Whether this model can be sustained long-term is still undetermined. But it's evident that, for the first time, it has lifted crypto tokens from the label of "casino chips" closer to "company stocks that create returns for holders" – at a pace that might even pressure Apple.

A Deeper Insight: The Stock as Product

This reveals a deeper insight: Apple realized, long before crypto existed, that it wasn't just selling iPhones, but also its own stock. Since 2012, Apple has spent nearly $1 trillion on buybacks (more than the GDP of many countries), reducing its share float by over 40%.

Apple's market cap remains above $3.8 trillion partly because it treats its stock as a "product that needs to be marketed, polished, and kept scarce." Apple doesn't need to issue new shares for funding – its balance sheet is cash-rich, so the stock itself becomes the "product," and shareholders become the "customers."

This logic is gradually permeating the cryptocurrency space.

Hyperliquid and Pump.fun succeed by not reinvesting or hoarding the cash their businesses generate, but by converting it into "purchasing power that boosts demand for their own tokens."

Shifting Investor Perception

This also changes how investors perceive crypto assets.

iPhone sales matter, but investors bullish on Apple know the stock has another "engine": scarcity. Now, with HYPE and PUMP tokens, traders are developing a similar awareness – they see these assets backed by a clear promise: every transaction or activity based on that token has over a 95% chance of being converted into "market buybacks and burns."

The Crucial Difference: Financial Resilience

But Apple's case also reveals another side: the power of buybacks always depends on the strength of the underlying cash flow. What happens when revenue declines? When iPhone and MacBook sales slow, Apple's robust balance sheet allows it to issue debt to fulfill buyback commitments. Hyperliquid and Pump.fun lack such a "cushion" – if trading volume shrinks, buybacks stall. More importantly, Apple can pivot to dividends, services, or new products during crises, whereas these crypto protocols currently have no "Plan B."

For cryptocurrency, there's also the risk of "token dilution."

Apple doesn't worry about "200 million new shares flooding the market overnight," but Hyperliquid does: starting November 2025, HYPE tokens worth nearly $12 billion will unlock for insiders, vastly exceeding daily buyback volumes.

Apple controls its share float, while crypto protocols are bound by token unlock schedules "set in stone" years ago.

Conclusion: A High-Stakes Experiment

Nonetheless, investors see value here, eager to participate. Apple's strategy is obvious, especially to those familiar with its decades-long history – it cultivated shareholder loyalty by turning its stock into a "financial product." Now, Hyperliquid and Pump.fun are attempting to replicate this path in the crypto world, just faster, louder, and riskier.