Ansem: Buybacks are actually not very useful; intangible value is more important than tangible value.

Odaily reported that the well-known trader Ansem posted on X stating that buybacks actually have little effect on coin prices.

Ansem gave an example: Hyperliquid’s annualized revenue is 800 million dollars, while Pump.fun’s annualized revenue is 440 million dollars; however, HYPE’s FDV is as high as 65 billion dollars while PUMP’s FDV is only 1.4 billion dollars. Both teams regularly use part of their business profits for buybacks, but their PS ratios differ dramatically.

This difference does not stem from how much actual revenue the business generates, but rather reflects the market’s “trust premium” in the team — trust built through their actions and decisions in the market. Hyperliquid never makes empty promises and instead focuses purely on delivering products, generously rewarding the core users who contribute most to the platform based on established criteria. In contrast, Pump.fun has earned 1 billion dollars in revenue, raised another 1 billion dollars in their ICO, and promised users an airdrop, but have yet to deliver. Even though they are one of the most successful and profitable businesses in crypto, they lack strong social consensus ties with their core user base and therefore cannot achieve the same trust premium as Hyperliquid.

Therefore, what determines the valuation of a business is not just “tangible value” from revenue and other quantifiable metrics, but also “intangible value.” Trust, memetics, and attention are all crucial in the market, but currently receive far too little discussion.