The corporate Bitcoin flywheel is breaking, but on the crypto side, there are projects that are attempting to reverse that strategy using actual revenue to buy back their own tokens. And that's the next story.

Crypto token buybacks hit record 638 million in 2026.

So, these guys raised a bunch of money, bought a bunch of Bitcoin and never planned for cash flow and then sold the low. That's the Bitcoin Treasury companies. Meanwhile, we have actually actually very successful crypto protocols that are using their cash flow and profits to buy back their own token. Imagine that.

Imagine making money and then using that money for good. Right?

So, crypto projects says that headline said, 638 million buying back their own tokens so far this year.

That was comparing to 545 million during the same period last year, so up a bit, but it was just 366,000 in 2024. So you can see what the model has changed for the attempt that these companies are making to add value by doing token buybacks.

So, for being honest, Hyperliquid and pump.fun account for 90% of that total, right? Hyperliquid spent 370 million, pump fund spent approximately 200.

So Hyperliquid directs almost all of their platform revenue towards hype purchases. Pump fund is about 50%, but this is fundamentally different from those treasury companies and fundamentally different from the alt coins of the past that were impossible to value, nobody could understand how you should view them. They didn't have utility.

This may not be the perfect iteration of crypto, but this is the way that obviously we're going to move forward and the tokens that will probably perform well are the ones that actually have utility, revenue, and you can see in some way shape or form how that revenue and all that accrues value to the actual token, right?

We've even talked about very successful projects that have equity and F tokens and the value really goes to the equity and not the token. So why would you hold a token if the shareholders are the ones who benefit?

There was news last week that Ethena was doing something similar to this and their token went up. I think it was about 20%. So, it's very clear that crypto investors here increasingly want tokens with recognizable financial value accrual.

So the industry spent all these years selling everybody on governance and community. Investors now just want revenue buybacks and fewer tokens.

Imagine that.