Hyperliquid HYPE Buybacks vs Unlocks: The Two Numbers to Watch
Hyperliquid buys back HYPE daily, but team token releases, including a $330M private sale, add supply. The video points to two numbers that show who is winning.
Key takeaways
- Hyperliquid's Assistance Fund receives almost all trading fees and buys HYPE on the open market every day. Since October 3 it also gets about 90% of the interest, after costs, on USDC parked on the exchange.
- The $380 HYPE figure is the video's calculator math: it puts XRP's market cap on HYPE's circulating coins. Priced at about $79, all 1 billion coins would already be worth about $79 billion.
- Because the fund spends dollars, a higher HYPE price means fewer coins bought each month unless fees grow.
- By the video's math, the 3.75 million HYPE private sale was more than the fund buys in about four months. The video says 1.87 million of those coins still sit unmoved in one wallet.
- Ripple Prime made Hyperliquid its first DeFi venue in February, so HYPE and XRP are not simply rivals.
Hyperliquid’s HYPE token is caught in a supply race. The exchange uses its trading fees to buy HYPE back every day, while the team that built it keeps releasing tokens, including a private sale of about $330 million in late September. The video argues two numbers show who is winning: the monthly buyback pace and one unmoved wallet.
That race matters to anyone holding or researching HYPE. Even with daily buying, HYPE has fallen about a fifth from its late-September record, according to the video. Buybacks are real and public, but so are unlocks, and a token’s value depends on both sides.
How does Hyperliquid buy back HYPE?
Hyperliquid buys back HYPE through its Assistance Fund, which receives almost all of the fees traders pay on the platform. Hyperliquid is a trading venue for perpetual futures: contracts with no expiry date that let people bet on where prices go next, usually with borrowed money. Every trade pays a small fee.
The host, Paul, gave these figures for the fund:
- It has bought HYPE in small amounts every day since the coin launched in late 2024.
- It has bought close to 50 million HYPE for more than $1.36 billion, an average of about $28 a coin.
- At a price of around $79, that pile is worth more than $3.5 billion.
- In the last 30 days, traders paid about $83 million in fees, and about $67 million went into buying HYPE. That works out to about $2.2 million a day, or roughly 28,000 coins a day at current prices.
The video does not explain why the $67 million buyback figure is lower than the $83 million in fees.
The video compares buybacks to a pizza. Most coins reward holders by printing new tokens, which cuts the same pizza into more, smaller slices. A buyback takes slices off the table, so each remaining slice is a bigger share.
On October 3, the fund gained a second source of money. According to the video, traders keep billions of dollars in USDC, a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar, on the exchange. Those dollars earn interest, and about 90% of that interest, after costs, now goes to the same fund. The video puts the first payment at about $14.6 million and says this money arrives whether or not anyone trades.
Where does the $380 HYPE figure come from?
The $380 figure comes from market cap math in the video. HYPE traded around $80 when the video was made, about 20% below its record of nearly $98 on September 23. The video says about 222 million HYPE are circulating, roughly 22% of a maximum supply of 1 billion. Data sites report different figures for both numbers. The host then puts XRP’s market cap, which he gives as around $84 billion, on those 222 million coins. That works out to about $380 per HYPE.
The video then explains why that number is weak:
- About 24% of all HYPE belongs to the team and unlocks over time.
- Nearly 39% is held back for future rewards and incentives.
- Pricing all 1 billion HYPE at about $79 gives $79 billion, already close to the $84 billion XRP figure.
So $380 only works if most locked coins stay off the market for good, which the host calls unlikely. He said he was not giving a price target and called $380 “just a sum on a calculator.” In the same passage, he added that if demand keeps growing at its current rate, $380 is “potentially a target that we could see in the next couple of years.” That is the host’s speculation, not a Bullrunners forecast. The host also said HYPE is one of his team’s largest holdings, which is worth weighing alongside his view. For a wider look at how locked supply affects coins, Bullrunners has ranked altcoins by their hidden supply and unlocks.
Supporters still point to real demand. According to the video, Multicoin Capital confirmed on October 19 that HYPE is its biggest hedge fund holding. The video also plays a December clip from the CEO of Hyperliquid Strategies, a Nasdaq-listed company that buys HYPE for its treasury. HYPE was around $35 at the time. He called the token “equity-like” because the platform uses 99% of its cash flow to buy it back.
Why does a rising price weaken the buyback?
A rising price weakens the buyback because the Assistance Fund spends dollars, not a fixed number of coins. If fees stay flat while HYPE climbs, every month buys fewer tokens.
| HYPE price | Monthly buyback (about $67M) buys |
|---|---|
| About $79 to $80 | About 850,000 HYPE |
| $380 | Under 200,000 HYPE |
Competition adds pressure on the fee side. On May 29, the CFTC, the US futures regulator, cleared the way for Kalshi to list a Bitcoin perpetual futures contract and for Coinbase to offer these products to American customers. Those regulated rivals are chasing the same traders whose fees feed Hyperliquid’s fund.
What was the $330 million HYPE sale?
The $330 million HYPE sale was a private deal by Hyperliquid Labs, the company that built the exchange. On September 30, Labs began pulling 3.75 million HYPE out of staking to sell to an institution it did not name. The coins were worth about $330 million at the time. By the video’s math, that one deal added more coins than the fund buys back in about four months: 3.75 million against roughly 850,000 a month. The video also says it was more than eight times larger than the team’s previous release of about 433,000 coins.
The team says none of the coins are being sold on an exchange. Here is what followed, according to the video:
- On October 7, half of the sale, about 1.87 million HYPE, landed in five wallets holding about 375,000 each.
- On-chain trackers saw 1.25 million HYPE go back into staking, which pays holders and takes seven days to unlock.
- The other 1.87 million HYPE sit in a single wallet that has not moved, with no word on when it will.
- Hyperliquid Strategies says it was not the buyer.
The host thinks a buyer who stakes coins is less likely to flip them quickly. He also thinks a $330 million purchase points to a large, possibly institutional player, though he called that conjecture. The video says HYPE slid from about $94 on October 5 to about $81 by October 12 during this period, and notes the data does not prove the sale caused it. Bullrunners covers the deal in more detail in what holders can and can’t see about the team’s OTC sale.
Could Hyperliquid open to US traders?
Hyperliquid may be heading toward US access, but as of the video nothing was approved. The video plays an August clip of President Donald Trump. In it, he said CFTC Chairman Mike Selig had authorized the first true Bitcoin perpetual futures contract on a CFTC-registered exchange. He added that Selig was working to bring Hyperliquid into the US “in a fully compliant and legal fashion.”
The video stresses that this is only an intention, with no approval or date. If it happens, the same rule changes that let rivals in could open the platform to American traders, whose fees would feed the fund. The host also keeps it in proportion. The US is home to the CME in Chicago, which he calls the largest futures exchange in the world, and next to it Hyperliquid is still a small player.
How is Ripple connected to Hyperliquid?
Ripple is connected to Hyperliquid through Ripple Prime, its brokerage for large institutions. On February 4, Ripple Prime made Hyperliquid its first DeFi venue. A prime broker lets big funds trade in many places through one account, and Ripple Prime says it serves more than 300 institutional clients. On October 15, Ripple Prime gave those clients access to more than 100 markets tied to contracts listed on Hyperliquid.
That makes the usual “HYPE versus XRP” framing less tidy. Whether activity like this reaches the XRP token itself is a separate question, covered in why XRP’s price hasn’t followed Ripple Prime’s growth.
The host’s broader point is that the market this year rewarded coins with visible revenue. In his view, HYPE’s daily buybacks since its late-2024 launch are a large part of why it rose so far, so fast.
A checklist for tracking HYPE’s supply race
These steps build on the numbers in the video. The first two come from the host. The rest are Bullrunners’ additions.
- Check the buyback pace. Look at the monthly fees going to the Assistance Fund and convert them into coins at the current price, not dollars.
- Watch the unmoved wallet. The host says that if the remaining 1.87 million HYPE from the private sale get staked, that points to a long-term holder. If they appear on exchanges, the fund would need about two months of buying just to absorb them.
- Compare against unlocks. Set the team’s scheduled releases and incentive coins against what the fund removes.
- Use fully diluted value. Fully diluted value is the price multiplied by every coin that will ever exist, not just those trading today. Use it before comparing HYPE with any other coin.
- Check more than one data source. Circulating and maximum supply figures for HYPE differ between data sites, so confirm the numbers before doing any market cap math.
What to watch next
Three things will show how the race is going. The first is the single wallet holding 1.87 million HYPE from the September sale. The second is whether fees, plus the new USDC interest stream, keep up with a higher price, since the same dollars buy fewer coins as HYPE rises. The third is any formal CFTC decision on US access. That could bring in new fee-paying traders, or leave Hyperliquid competing with regulated rivals like Kalshi and Coinbase.
Frequently asked questions
How do Hyperliquid's HYPE buybacks work?
Almost all trading fees on Hyperliquid go into the Assistance Fund, which buys HYPE on the open market in small amounts every day. According to the video, it has bought close to 50 million HYPE for more than $1.36 billion, at an average price of about $28.
Who bought the $330 million of HYPE from Hyperliquid Labs?
Nobody outside the deal has said. Hyperliquid Labs sold 3.75 million HYPE to an institution it did not name. Hyperliquid Strategies, the Nasdaq-listed HYPE treasury company, says it was not the buyer.
Can HYPE reach $380?
The video arrives at $380 by putting XRP's market cap, about $84 billion by the host's figure, on HYPE's roughly 222 million circulating coins. The host called it 'just a sum on a calculator' but also said it could potentially be reached in a couple of years if demand keeps growing. That is speculation, and the math ignores the roughly 78% of supply not yet circulating.
Can Americans use Hyperliquid?
Not officially, as of the video. In August, President Donald Trump said CFTC Chairman Mike Selig was working to bring Hyperliquid into the US in a compliant way. The video stresses that nothing had been approved or given a date.
Is Ripple connected to Hyperliquid?
Yes. On February 4, Ripple Prime, Ripple's brokerage for institutions, made Hyperliquid its first DeFi venue. On October 15 it gave clients access to more than 100 markets tied to contracts listed on Hyperliquid.
Full video transcript
From the video's captions, lightly formatted. Captions can mishear names and numbers, so check figures against the article above.
At the end of September, the company that built the crypto coin hype, otherwise known as HyperLiquid, agreed to sell about 330 million of its token to one big investor that it hasn't named. And the trading platform behind that coin, called HyperLiquid, takes the fees its traders pay and uses them to buy hype back off the open market every single day, which explains why it has performed so well this year. Now, even with all of that buying, hype has fallen about a fifth from its record it set in late September. So, if you hold hype or you're thinking about buying it, a lot of what your coins are worth come down to one question. Can this platform buy hype up faster than the people who built it keep releasing it?
Because at the end of the day, we do have an unlock schedule, and that's going to matter for the price action moving forward. So, by the end of this video, you'll know the two numbers that tell you who's winning that race. And one of them lives in a wallet tied to that 330 million-dollar sale. And if you could check both before you buy, they could help you make real money off the next move. You'll also see a door opening in Washington that could let American traders onto this platform without having to use a VPN.
And the first of those two numbers starts with a small fee on every trade placed on this platform. So, if you're here to build real wealth, protect what's yours, and be the one to change your family's future, be sure to hit the subscribe button and comment bullish below. Now, let's dive into the video, and before we do, I'm giving away our 2026 altcoin trading strategies and crypto yield generation brief to everyone who follows us on Instagram over at Bull Runners. The official link will be in the description below this video. Now, let's run it.
What's going on, Bull Runners? Welcome back to the channel. If you're new here, my name is Paul and you can find me on Twitter or X at Crypto Paul. Now, Hyperliquid is a trading platform where people bet on where prices go next, usually with borrowed money. And every one of those trades pays a small fee.
Almost all of that fee money goes into something called the Assistance Fund. And that fund has been buying Hype on the open market in small amounts every single day since the coin launched in late 2024. So far, it's bought close to 50 million coins for more than 1.36 billion at an average price of $28 each. And at today's price of around $79, that pile is worth over 3.5 billion. In the last 30 days alone, traders paid about 83 million in fees and about 67 million of it went straight into buying Hype.
That's about 2.2 million every single day, which buys somewhere around 28,000 coins a day at today's prices. Most coins pay their holders by printing new coins. And that's like cutting the same pizza into more slices. You get an extra slice, but every slice gets smaller. So essentially, nobody ends up with more pizza.
Hyperliquid does the opposite. It buys slices back and takes them off the table completely. So every slice that's left is a bigger share of the whole pizza. And that's a big reason so many people are paying attention to this coin and why it's performed so well. Then on October 3rd, the fund picked up a brand new source of money.
Traders keep billions of dollars in USDC, which is a digital dollar in crypto form, parked on an exchange. Those dollars earn interest, and about 90% of the interest now goes into the same buying fund. The first payment was about 14.6 million with more meant to follow. And it comes in whether anybody trades this thing or not. So money is now coming in from two directions, and that's exactly why people started running the market cap math, which lands on a number that sounds crazy until you see where it comes from.
Hype trades at around 80 bucks right now, give or take a dollar or two, about 20% below the record of nearly $98 it hit on September 23rd, and only around 222 million coins are actually trading. That's about 22% of the 1 billion that will ever exist. For comparison, XRP's market cap sits around 84 billion. So, if you put that same value on those 222 million coins, you'd get about $380 for every single hype token. And the bulls with real money on the line keep piling in.
On October 19th, Multicoin Capital confirmed Hype is now its biggest hedge fund holding. And back in December, when Hype was still around $35, the CEO of Hyperliquid Strategies, a Nasdaq-listed company that buys Hype for its treasury, put it like this.
They issued it about a year ago. They They gave it to some of their best clients, the best customers, and they made a promise that they would use the vast majority. Today, it's 99% They use 99% of their cash flow to buy back the token. So, it's not equity, but it's equity-like. It's kind of a proxy for equity in their in their company.
They're buying it back every day, and when you look at it in sort of traditional valuation metrics, it's not really that expensive.
It's easy to see the appeal because a coin that keeps buying itself back sounds like it's only able to go one way, and that's up. And the math is real, but it leaves out the other 78% of the tokens, and those don't simply vanish. Almost 24% of all Hype belongs to the people who built it, and unlocks for them over time. And nearly 39% is held back for future rewards and incentives. Price every Hype that will ever exist at today's price of around $79 and you get $79 billion, which is already close to that $84 billion.
So, getting one hype anywhere near 380 only works if most of those locked coins stay off the market for good, which is unlikely. But, we can potentially see major growth and demand. Either way, the competition picture changed this year, too, because on May 29th, the CFTC, America's futures regulator, let Kalshi list a Bitcoin version of these bets and let Coinbase offer them to American customers, which means rivals with a regulator stamp are now chasing the exact traders whose fees feed this fund. There's another catch and it sits inside the buyback itself, because the fund spent dollars. So, if the fees stay flat while the price climbs, every month buys fewer coins.
At around $79 to $80, that's $67 million month buys about 850k coins. And at $380, the exact same month buys under 200,000 coins. Every one of those purchases is real and public, but a coin worth buying has to hold up on its weakest numbers, too. And those are the ones that the hype channels never put on the screen, because it's not sexy or attractive. So, the $380 question really comes down to a race between the coins the fund pulls off the market and the coins still waiting to come onto the market.
And on September 30th, the team behind Hyperliquid put more coins into that race in a single deal than the fund buys back in 4 months. The people who've done best on hype are the ones who found it long before any of this was a headline. Back then, the airdrop one of the coaches inside of our private intelligence network took at launch went from $30,000. That's a $30,000 airdrop and it turned into over $280,000. Now, these results, of course, aren't typical, so don't be typical.
It's obvious that crypto can be risky, so you do need to do your own research. But in January of 2025, our research team did flag Hyperliquid inside of our network as a new high-cap gem at $26.90, and it's currently sitting at about 80 to 82 dollars right now. That's almost three times higher. And currently, Hype is one of our team's highest conviction picks at about 20% of the model portfolio. And the team bought back in on October 13th around $80.
So with that much of the model portfolio sitting in Hype, this deal matters a lot. And let's get into it. On September 30th, Hyperliquid Labs, the company that built the exchange, started pulling 3.75 million Hype out of staking for a private sale to an institution that it wouldn't name. This was worth about 330 million dollars at the time. The team says none of these coins are being sold on an exchange.
So they're not hitting the same market where everyone else buys Hype. It's still a huge number for this coin. The team's last release before this was about 433,000 coins, and this one deal was more than eight times bigger. The fear channels jumped on it straight away and called it the team dumping on holders, and you can see why because insider selling is the oldest warning sign in a crypto and how poorly it's going to perform in the future. But on October 7th, half of it, we're talking 1.87 million coins, landed in five wallets with 375 coins each.
Then, on-chain trackers watched 1.25 million of those coins go straight back into staking, which pays you to hold and takes seven days to unlock. And buyers who plan to flip a coin in a hurry don't usually lock it up first, which means it's likely a higher conviction play. I would think that you don't go and spend 330 million dollars on an private over-the-counter deal without thinking I need this thing to obviously grow in value a lot before I want to sell any of it. Now, the other 1.87 million coins are still sitting in one wallet that haven't moved and nobody has said when they will. Even the Nasdaq-listed company that holds Hype as its treasury says it wasn't the buyer.
So, nobody outside the deal knows who owns these coins or what they paid. Now, in my opinion, you can't just go and drop $330 million without being a very big player, potentially an institutional player. But, right now that is complete conjecture. Either way, Hype slid from about $94 on October 5th to about $81 by the 12th while all of this played out. Though the data doesn't prove the deal caused it.
So, that wallet is the number to watch next to the buyback. If those coins end up staked as well, it looks like a long-term buyer stepped in at size. But, if they start turning up on exchanges, then the fund has to soak up about 2 months of its own buying just to stay at easy normal flat level. And while all of that was happening inside of a team wallet, another thing was going on in Washington because the CFTC has been playing ball with companies like Kalshi and Coinbase. And it could even let Hyperliquid in as well because in August, here is what the president said.
And may Chairman sell the authorized the first ever true Bitcoin perpetual futures contract on a CFTC registered exchange first time. I understand that Mike is also working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States in a fully compliant and legal fashion. It's working very hard on that.
Now, so far, this is only an intention since nobody has approved anything or put a date on it yet. But, if it happens, the same rule change that brought in the rivals could hand the biggest pool of traders in the world to Hyperliquid. And their fees would feed the fund instead of draining it. Now, the US is home to the CME in Chicago, the biggest futures exchange in the world. And next to everything that trades there, Hyperliquid is still an extremely small player.
So, it's a bit like a corner shop hearing the council might let it open up shop inside the biggest shopping center in the country right after two big chains got the keys first. There's one more thing about this exchange most people miss because Ripple already plugged into it. On February 4th, Ripple Prime, the brokerage Ripple runs for big institutions, made Hyperliquid its first DeFi venue. A prime broker is the middleman big funds use so they can trade in lots of places through one single account. It's a bit like having one bank card that works everywhere.
And now one of those places is Hyperliquid right next to everything else those clients do through Ripple. Ripple Prime says it serves over 300 institutional clients. So, when people set hype and XRP up as a fight, they forget the part where Ripple's own brokerage gives its clients a door straight into this exchange. And on October 15th, the Ripple Prime team opened up its doors and allowed its clients access to more than 100 markets tied to contracts listed on Hyperliquid. And that tells you a lot about how this market pays people now.
A lot of people in crypto are sure that patience alone gets rewarded and that one day the market pays them back every year they held. After the crashes and the years of being laughed at, that loyalty totally makes sense and it's probably the reason you're still watching. But look at what the market rewarded this year. Hype launched in late 2024 and it now sits just outside of the top 10 after spending every day of that time buying back its own coins while most of the market paid its holders nothing. Money in this market keeps moving towards coins with real value and true businesses underneath them where you can actually see money coming in every single day.
And that's a big part of why hype got this far this fast, which is rare in a crypto bear market. Now, I'm not telling you to buy hype. I'm not giving you a price target because the $380 we mentioned earlier is just a sum on a calculator depending on whether or not it actually hits the same targets in terms of market cap as XRP and no new coins enter the market. But if demand continues to grow at the rate it has, this is potentially a target that we could see in the next couple of years. Now, if you're serious and you've been in crypto long enough, you probably already know you shouldn't keep everything in a single coin.
And the hardest part has always been actually doing something about it. So, if you decide hype belongs in your portfolio, you give it a set size next to everything else you hold, maybe divvy it up, buy it in smaller chunks over a few weeks or a few months. We call that dollar cost averaging and never make it a single big click just because you saw one green candle. Like, hit the buy button because it pumped hard. That's probably not a good decision most of the time.
It's better to have a game plan. And sometimes that can be difficult to do alone. More importantly, it's difficult to find coins like this before they're talked about everywhere, which is exactly what our research team does every single week. It's how they had Ondo on our pick sheet at about 37 cents back in July before it ran more than 60% into the September high. And it's why our team posted even HBAR for our members at about 9.6 cents in September.
This was the night before it rallied 30% in a single day. Now, our members are putting that research to work like Albert, who is up over $6,500 on his NEAR in September. And here's one of our members in her own words. Now, that said, our private intelligence network stays small by design and just a few new people come in each month because our team gets to know every single member personally. And yes, we use AI to help us summarize and record our calls, but everything truly is one-on-one help, which means we are actively working with our members personally.
Hence, why we can only accept so many per month. Members get our research before it ever reaches this channel and there's a live call every week on when to buy and when to take profit and every coin stays in a wallet that only you have the keys to, which means you have true sovereignty over your money and we help you to do that as well. Not only that, we're doing this next to a group of vetted serious investors instead of on our own. So, if you'd rather be early on the next coin like this than read about it after the run and you believe that we're at the start of the bull market just like me and you don't want to miss out on the next major opportunity, then be sure to click on the very first link down in the description below to watch the free brief and if it makes sense, book a call with our team. We'll look at where you're at and tell you what we see and whether or not this is the right fit for you, we'll tell you straight.
So, it's no harm, no foul, you get tons of free value and you get to figure out where you're at, maybe have more clarity. So, go ahead and click on that more button if you're watching this on mobile down below. You'll see it's the very first link in the description below, but that is it for the video, folks. If you enjoyed it, be sure to subscribe to the channel and I will see you in the next one. Goodbye.
[music] [music]
Education and commentary only, not financial advice. Crypto is volatile and you can lose money. Do your own research and speak to a qualified advisor before making investment decisions. Figures and quotes are as reported in the video on November 4, 2026 and may have changed since.
