Token Buybacks — New Trend or Real Power?

In traditional business, buybacks have long been a weapon of corporations. Apple spent $83 billion on stock repurchases in 2024, reducing supply and boosting price. Now this phenomenon has made its way into crypto — and it seems to be becoming the “new meta” of the current cycle.

Here are some projects actively using buybacks:

— Hyperliquid ($HYPE) — up to $90M in monthly revenue, 97% goes to repurchases. Since January, $1.37B worth of tokens have been bought back (8.6% of supply).

— PumpFun ($PUMP) — memecoin platform, 100% of revenue dedicated to buybacks ($25–30M per month).

— Ethena ($ENA) — synthetic dollar USDe doubled in size within a month, with a $260M buyback program.

— Raydium ($RAY) — Solana DEX, low issuance, 12% of fees spent on buybacks ($5.7M in July).

— deBridge ($DBR) — cross-chain project, $10–12M annual revenue, all directed to token repurchases.

It sounds appealing: less supply means higher price. But it’s important to remember that a buyback can serve either as a signal of strength (real revenue, competitive advantage, low inflation) or as a cover-up for deeper issues.

The same has happened in traditional markets: companies bought back shares instead of investing in real growth.

We’ve already discussed the trend of “financialization” in crypto — where DeFi protocols borrow mechanisms from the stock market. Buybacks are part of this process.

What to watch for:
— Does the project have sustainable revenue, or just temporary hype?
— How is the token issuance structured?
— Are large unlocks coming up that would negate the effect of buybacks?

Buybacks may become an important filter for identifying strong projects. But it’s risky to blindly trust the mechanism — there must be real economics behind it, not just marketing.