On-chain monitoring shows Hyperliquid has now burned 49.87 million HYPE tokens. Against a maximum supply of 1 billion units, that’s close to 5%, and at current market prices the destroyed tokens add up to $3.89 billion.
There’s a problem with the burn, though. HYPE is still being released into circulation faster than it’s being removed.
Unlocks outrun the burn
Every month, scheduled vesting for the team and early contributors puts roughly 9.9 million HYPE into circulation. The amount being burned is far smaller.
The protocol burned 19,700 HYPE in the last 24 hours, about $1.59 million worth. Kept up for a month, that pace would mean buybacks remove around 591,000 HYPE. That’s only about 6% of what unlocks each month, which means circulating supply keeps rising while the burn runs.
For HYPE to turn deflationary over the long term, fee generation would have to beat the vesting schedule month after month. The current figures are nowhere near that.
Buybacks set in dollars
Because Hyperliquid sets its buyback in US dollars, the number of tokens it destroys moves with the market. HYPE is trading at roughly $78 to $80, so each dollar of fees buys back fewer tokens than it would if the price were lower.
A higher HYPE price means each dollar of fees takes less supply off the market.
Where the fees go
The burn is automatic. Fee revenue is converted into continuous buybacks on the open market, and the protocol has kept this going as the platform’s lifetime revenue climbed past $1.38 billion.
The last 30 days brought in $63.52 million of that total. In the latest 24-hour window, daily protocol fees came to $1.69 million, not far off the $1.59 million used to burn tokens during the same stretch.
Beyond standard trading fees, Hyperliquid’s design includes other automated deflation channels, but the buyback funded by trading fees is the largest.
A fund nobody can unlock
All of this runs through the Assistance Fund, a system smart contract that has no private keys. It receives between 97% and 99% of the exchange’s trading fees.
In December 2025, 85% of the network’s validators voted to treat the fund’s balance as officially burned. Since there are no keys, no one can pull those tokens back out.
Even so, with 591,000 tokens a month burned against 9.9 million unlocked, HYPE holders are still being diluted for now.