Pump.fun is going to burn their buyback tokens and gigasend it

pump.fun has spent $369M buying back 126.8B PUMP, roughly 35.8% of free float. What’s the rational move with 127B tokens sitting in a treasury 74 days (Jul 12) before the team’s cliff unlock?

Source: fees.pump.fun

Let’s walk through the decision tree.

1. Option 1) Sell 127B (roughly $224M) into $52M daily volume and you crater the token, suicidal for a team about to vest.
2. Option 2) Recycle through staking, airdrops, or LP and you redistribute to holders who sell, a slower dump with extra steps while total supply stays unchanged.
3. Option 3) Hold indefinitely and the pile grows by 520M tokens per day, compounding an uncertainty tax that the market prices as a permanent overhang.
4. Option 4) Or burn the pile, reducing total supply from 1T to roughly 873B, the only outcome where every holder’s per-unit claim on future cash flows increases, including the team’s own unvested allocation.

Three of the four branches destroy value. The fourth is a one-time permanent removal that benefits everyone holding the token. The disclaimer on the buyback page says pump.fun “may modify or discontinue those plans at any time,” which means nothing contractually prevents a burn and nothing contractually guarantees one. But when three options lead to value destruction, the remaining option doesn’t need much advocacy.

July 12 turns the burn from nice-to-have into self-interest. That day, 82.5B tokens unlock as team (200B) and investor (130B) allocations begin a 36-month linear vfest. Post-cliff monthly emissions run roughly 11.9B, split between community (~5B) and team/investor (~6.875B). At current revenue of ~$920K/day and a $0.00177 token price, the buyback absorbs ~520M tokens per day, which is ~15.6B per month, running at roughly 1.3x buyback/emission coverage. Revenue has oscillated between $750K and $1.1M/day for six months now. At 1.3x, $336M a year in buybacks roughly matches post-July emissions.

Let’s run two scenarios. If the team burns before the unlock, circulating supply goes from 590B - 127B + 82.5B (cliff) = 545.5B, which is 7.6% below today’s float. If nothing burns and the cliff hits raw, circulating supply goes to 672.5B, a 14% dilution from where we sit. That’s a 22% swing in circulating supply, and needless to say the team's own 50B cliff tokens are worth more per unit in the first one.

Now strip the cliff out — 590B collapses to ~463B of free float, +27% per token at constant market cap. At $0.00177, market cap is $1.04B and FDV is $1.77B, down 80% from the all-time high. Against ~$336M annualized revenue, that's 3.1x on market cap.

Assign 30% probability to the burn and you're picking up ~8.1% in expected price impact from that scenario alone before any multiple rerating. The upside only requires the team to act in their own financial interest.