New Strategies in the Encryption Industry: Learning from Apple's Buyback Model

Seven years ago, Apple achieved a financial feat whose impact even surpassed that of the company's most outstanding products. In April 2017, Apple opened its new headquarters campus in California, which cost $5 billion; a year later, the company announced a $100 billion stock buyback plan, an amount 20 times the investment in its headquarters. This sent a core message from Apple to the world: besides the iPhone, it has another equally important "product."

This was the largest stock buyback program in the world at the time and was part of Apple's decade-long buyback spree. During this period, Apple spent over $725 billion to repurchase its own shares. Six years later, in May 2024, this tech giant broke the record again by announcing an $110 billion buyback program. This move demonstrates that Apple not only knows how to create scarcity in hardware devices but is also adept at operations on the stock level.

Nowadays, the encryption currency industry is adopting similar strategies, with a faster pace and larger scale.

The two major "revenue engines" in the industry are using almost every cent of their transaction fee income to buy back their own tokens.

A perpetual futures exchange set a record of $106 million in fee income in August 2025, of which over 90% was used to buy back its tokens on the open market. Meanwhile, a meme coin issuance platform's daily income briefly exceeded that of the exchange, reaching $3.38 million on a certain day in September 2025. All of this income was ultimately used to buy back the platform's tokens. In fact, this buyback model has been ongoing for more than two months.

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This operation gradually gives encryption tokens the attributes of "shareholder rights representation", which is rare in the cryptocurrency field, as tokens in this area are often sold off to investors at any opportunity.

The logic behind it is that cryptocurrency projects are trying to replicate the long-term successful path of Wall Street's "Dividend Aristocrats": these companies spend huge amounts of money to return value to shareholders through stable cash dividends or stock buybacks. Taking Apple as an example, its stock buyback amounted to $104 billion in 2024, accounting for about 3%-4% of its market capitalization at the time; while a certain perpetual futures exchange achieved a "circulation offset ratio" as high as 9% through buybacks.

Even by the standards of traditional stock markets, such numbers are astonishing; in the field of encryption, they are unprecedented.

A certain perpetual futures exchange has a very clear positioning: it has created a decentralized perpetual futures exchange that combines the smooth experience of a centralized exchange, yet operates entirely on-chain. The platform supports zero Gas fees and high leverage trading, and it is a Layer 1 focused on perpetual contracts. By mid-2025, its monthly trading volume has exceeded $400 billion, capturing about 70% of the DeFi perpetual contract market.

What truly sets this exchange apart is its method of capital utilization.

The platform will allocate more than 90% of its fee revenue to the "Assistance Fund" every day, and these funds will be directly used to purchase its tokens on the open market.

As of the writing of this article, the fund has accumulated more than 31.61 million of this token, valued at approximately $1.4 billion, an increase of ten times from 3 million in January 2025.

This repurchase frenzy reduced the circulating supply of the token by about 9%, driving its price to peak at $60 in mid-September 2025.

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At the same time, a certain Meme coin issuance platform has reduced its token circulation by approximately 7.5% through buybacks.

This platform transforms the "Meme coin craze" into a sustainable business model with extremely low fees: anyone can issue tokens on the platform and build a "bonding curve" to allow market enthusiasm to ferment freely. This platform, which was initially just a "joke tool," has now become a "production factory" for speculative assets.

But hidden dangers also exist.

The income of this Meme coin platform exhibits obvious seasonality, as its revenue is directly linked to the popularity of Meme coin issuance. In July 2025, the platform's income fell to 17.11 million dollars, the lowest level since April 2024, and the buyback scale was also reduced accordingly; by August, monthly income rebounded to over 41.05 million dollars.

However, "sustainability" remains an unresolved issue. When the "Meme season" cools down (which has happened in the past and will inevitably happen in the future), token buybacks will also shrink accordingly. More seriously, the platform is facing a lawsuit amounting to 5.5 billion dollars, with the plaintiff accusing its business of being "similar to illegal gambling."

The core that supports these two platforms at present is their willingness to "return profits to the community."

Apple has returned nearly 90% of its profits to shareholders through buybacks and dividends in certain years, but these decisions were mostly temporary "bulk announcements"; whereas these two encryption platforms continuously return almost 100% of their revenue to token holders on a daily basis, and this model is sustainable.

Of course, there are essential differences between the two: cash dividends are "immediate returns," which, although taxable, are highly stable; whereas buybacks are at most just a "price support tool." Once income declines or the amount of tokens unlocked far exceeds the buyback amount, the effects of the buyback become ineffective. A certain perpetual futures exchange is facing an upcoming "unlock shock," while a certain meme coin platform needs to deal with the risk of "meme coin popularity transfer." Compared to Johnson & Johnson's record of "63 years of continuously increasing dividends" or Apple's long-term stable buyback strategy, the operations of these two crypto platforms are more like "walking a tightrope at a great height."

But perhaps, this is already not easy in the encryption industry.

Cryptocurrency is still in its development maturity stage and has not yet formed a stable business model, but it has already demonstrated an astonishing "development speed". The repurchase strategy happens to possess the elements that drive industry acceleration: flexibility, tax efficiency, and deflationary attributes, which are highly compatible with the "speculation-driven" crypto market. As of now, this strategy has turned two completely different positioned projects into top "income machines" in the industry.

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Whether this model can be sustained in the long term is still undecided. However, it is evident that it has for the first time freed encryption tokens from the label of "casino chips," bringing them closer to "company stocks that can generate returns for holders," with a return rate that could even put pressure on Apple.

This contains a deeper insight: Apple realized long before the emergence of cryptocurrency that what it was selling was not just the iPhone, but also its own stock. Since 2012, Apple has spent nearly $1 trillion on stock buybacks (more than the GDP of most countries), reducing the circulating volume of its stock by over 40%.

Currently, Apple's market value remains above $3.8 trillion, partly because it views its stock as a "product that needs marketing, polishing, and maintaining scarcity." Apple does not need to raise funds through issuing more shares; its balance sheet is cash-rich, so the stock itself has become a "product," and shareholders have become "customers."

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This logic is gradually permeating the encryption currency field.

The success of these two encryption platforms lies in the fact that they do not use the cash generated by their business for reinvestment or hoarding, but instead transform it into "the purchasing power that boosts the demand for their own tokens."

This has also changed investors' perception of encryption assets.

The sales of the iPhone are certainly important, but investors who are optimistic about Apple know that the stock has another "engine": scarcity. Nowadays, traders are beginning to form a similar understanding of these encryption tokens; they see these assets as having a clear commitment behind them: every consumption or transaction based on the token has over a 95% probability of being converted into "market buybacks and burns."

But Apple's case also reveals another aspect: the intensity of buybacks always depends on the strength of the cash flow behind it. What happens when revenues decline? When iPhone and MacBook sales slow down, Apple's strong balance sheet allows it to fulfill its buyback commitments through bond issuance; however, these two encryption platforms do not have such a "buffer", and once trading volumes shrink, buybacks will also come to a halt. More importantly, Apple can turn to dividends, service businesses, or new products to cope with crises, whereas these encryption protocols currently have no "backup plans".

For cryptocurrencies, there is also the risk of "token dilution."

Apple need not worry about "200 million new shares flooding the market overnight", but a certain perpetual futures exchange is facing this issue: starting from November 2025, tokens worth nearly $12 billion will be unlocked for insiders, a scale far exceeding the daily repurchase volume.

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Apple can independently control the circulation of its stocks, while the encryption protocol is subject to the token unlocking schedule that has been "set in stone" years ago.

Even so, investors still see value in it and are eager to participate. Apple's strategy is evident, especially for those familiar with its decades-long development. Apple has cultivated shareholder loyalty by transforming its stock into "financial products." Today, these two encryption platforms are trying to replicate this path in the encryption field, only at a faster pace, with greater momentum, and with higher risks.

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