Hyperliquid Has Recycled Over $1.16B in Trading Fees Into HYPE Buybacks!

Forbes contributor Zennon Kapron argues that HYPE's recent rally is powered less by ETF speculation than by a structural buyback engine baked into Hyperliquid's protocol. Since launch, the platform has funneled nearly all of its trading fee revenue — over $1.16 billion — into open-market HYPE purchases through its "Assistance Fund."

Kapron frames the mechanism as a quarterly multi-hundred-million-dollar price support machine, suggesting it provides a more durable floor than early-stage ETF inflows typically deliver. The logic is straightforward: as long as trading volumes hold, the fund keeps buying.

The caveat is equally direct. The buyback is volume-dependent by design. A sustained market downturn that compresses fee revenue would shrink the fund's firepower and, with it, the price floor. The mechanism is structural, but it is not unconditional.