Crypto: Token buybacks hit record $638 million in 2025

Two winners, and lots of extras. Crypto projects have spent $638 million since January to buy back their own tokens from the market. It's a record. Except that this windfall from decentralized finance does not trickle down. quite the contrary. It originates from two major players in the sector. In fact, Hyperliquid and Pump.fun together sign almost 90% of the bill. Buying back tokens is an old reflex of Wall Street monkeys. The mechanism of a company using its profits to withdraw its shares from circulation has become the favorite marketing argument of money-making protocols. And an empty promise for those who don't earn one.

Hyperliquid, the HYPE buyback machine running at full speed

The figure comes from an analysis by the Financial Times. It is built on data from the on-chain analysis company Allium Labs as of August 25. Over the same period of 2025, buybacks reached $545 million. And in 2024, a full year? $366,000, without the word million behind it.

It is Hyperliquid which is responsible for most of this progression. The decentralized perpetual platform (futures contracts with no expiry, traded on-chain with leverage) pays 99% of its trading fees to a “assistance fund”. This fund converts fees into HYPE automatically, at the blockchain level. Then, the tokens are destroyed and permanently removed from the total supply. In the second quarter alone, $169 million in revenue generated 141 million redemptions. Mechanics, not marketing.

Matt Hougan, investment director at Bitwise, also sees this as “the main reason” for the increase: the mechanism “offers investors a clear channel through which the growing activity of the protocol is reflected in the value of the token”. In other words, each trader who pays fees is unknowingly buying HYPE for others. The token even landed a spot in Hashdex’s Nasdaq multi-asset ETF since September 1, with a weighting of 3.4%.

One year of hindsight is enough to decide, without freezing a price that moves every day: HYPE has increased by around 90% since September 2025, when PUMP peaked at 13% over the same period (CoinGecko, September 4). The protocol is identical. The trajectories, no.

Pump.fun, the buyback that doesn’t buy trust

Second buyer in the ranking, Pump.fun did not have the same luck. The memecoin launcher on Solana has long devoted 100% of his income to buying PUMP. Nine months of collection, then 36% of the circulating supply destroyed at once on April 29, or $370 million gone up in smoke. The course did not follow.

Confidence had already been eroded earlier in the year, when the team increased its transfers from SOL to Kraken, fueling suspicions about the real state of its reserves. Co-founder Alon Cohen admitted to CoinDesk the same day of the burn: “there was a lack of confidence in the longevity of the company.” Pump.fun therefore reduced its program to 50% of revenues, the other half being used to finance development and recruitment.

It must be said that the raw material melts. The protocol's revenues reached $971 million in 2025, when the annualized rate for 2026 is around $320 million. Buying back half of a falling turnover is still a fall. A buyback removes supply, but creates no demand. When users leave, no one buys what the protocol burns.

Token redemptions: a remedy that only cures the healthy

Further down the ranking, checks get smaller. Sky Protocol (the former MakerDAO) bought $26 million worth of SKY and its token is growing by around 8% over one year. Jupiter spent $14 million on JUP, which lost 55%. Chainlink buys back, and LINK gives up 50%. Helium completely stopped its program in February. Lido conditions its own on $40 million in annualized revenue, while LDO gives up 71%.

At Allium, head of research Elton Shehdula acknowledges that buybacks "can create an appearance of confidence", but he remains "skeptical that such initiatives, on their own, will significantly increase prices". Amir Hajian, researcher at Keyrock, goes further. “The era of tokens riding high on hype is over. » Investors want cash flow. Those who have it buy it back, those who don’t have it pretend.

DeFi vs TradFi

Size difference with the Stock Market, all the same. A listed company that repurchases its shares does so within a defined framework (in the United States, SEC rule 10b-18 caps daily volumes and regulates purchase times), with quarterly publication of the amounts. A protocol alone decides the percentage, the pace and the termination, by governance vote or by simple message on No constraints, no sanctions. The redemption of tokens remains, for the moment, a revocable promise.