According to Fixygen, buybacks—a strategy long used by public companies to support their stock prices—are becoming one of the main tools of the cryptocurrency market.
In 2026, crypto projects have already allocated approximately $640 million to buy back their own tokens—a historic high, according to the Financial Times.
By comparison, this figure stood at about $545 million for all of 2025, and in 2024, it was just $366,000.
Nearly 90% of current buybacks are accounted for by Hyperliquid and pump.fun.
Hyperliquid allocates virtually all of the platform’s revenue toward purchasing HYPE. Against the backdrop of this policy, the token’s value has risen by approximately 70%.
The economic logic is similar to a stock buyback: a company or protocol uses its cash flow to reduce the number of tokens in free circulation and increase the economic value of the remaining ones.
However, there is a fundamental difference between a token and a stock. A stock represents an ownership stake in a company, whereas a token holder’s rights may be significantly weaker or may not confer any legal right to profits at all.
Therefore, a buyback alone does not guarantee growth. Some projects continued to lose value even after launching buyback programs.
Nevertheless, the emergence of a $640 million buyback market indicates that the cryptocurrency industry is gradually adopting tools from traditional corporate finance.
