GM. This is Milk Road, your announcer for today’s fight: in the blue corner – buybacks. In the red corner – innovation & growth...

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TWITTER FIIIGHT: TOKEN BUYBACKS 🥊

There’s a fight breaking out on Crypto Twitter…

And it’s all centered around token buybacks – which are often highly celebrated in crypto. 

(’Cause if your app is spitting off enough spare cash to go and repurchase its own token - you must be doing something right!)

… but should buybacks be so heavily relied upon? Or are they damaging growth and innovation?

That’s the core of this debate. 👇

Here’s everything you’ve missed so far, starting with…

1. Why users love buybacks

Holding a crypto app’s token is not like holding a share in a company. 

It doesn’t give you any ownership in the company that built the app.

So if the value of the company grows, it’s not necessarily reflected in the token’s price. 

Instead, tokens act more like commodities (think: oil and energy). 

They power the apps.

E.g. If you want to trade on Hyperliquid, you need to pay fees using HYPE tokens. More users on Hyperliquid = more demand for HYPE = HYPE growing in value.

So what’s a quick way to increase demand for your app’s token, without bringing in new users?

Simple: 

Take a chunk of your revenue → use it to buy your own token → create artificial demand → all while reducing your token’s circulating supply (making it more scarce).

And if HYPE is anything to go by, actively reducing a token’s circulating supply works (to varying degrees) in both good & bad market conditions:

Ahhhh, ok? This looks/sounds awesome – where’s the beef?

The issue is, buybacks don’t improve the product or increase its overall use all that effectively.

And it’s not like there aren’t other (better) options out there…

TWITTER FIIIGHT: TOKEN BUYBACKS (P2) 🥊

Sure, buying back your own token works.

BUT!

There are other levers apps can pull that will not only increase token demand, but also push innovation & growth…

2. Buybacks: Not the only game in town

The other options at hand are…

Long term, all of these options push innovation and/or growth more effectively than buybacks… problem is: They aren’t easy, reliable wins.

Meanwhile, buybacks work pretty darn effectively, right out of the gates! But they’re a short term solution, and not nearly as effective as, say, creating a killer new product.

E.g. If Apple were to spend its money buying back its shares, that would create short term demand for the stock (lower risk, lower reward). 

But if they spent that same money developing a new hit product – while it might take a minute – it would create longer lasting demand for the stock (higher risk, higher reward).

And that’s what’s really being debated here:

3. So here’s where the argument nets out…

If I had to summarize everything I’ve been reading, the conclusion would go something like this:

“Ok, ok - yeah, the crypto space has probably gone a little crazy with buybacks of late…

And yeah, there’re probably some apps out there that should be putting their spare cash into innovation, marketing, and acquisitions over buybacks…

But it’s not a ‘Yes/No’ question.

Instead of seeing buybacks as the first (and often only) option at hand, we want apps to see token buybacks as the final demand lever in their tool kit. 

(The same way only mature companies do stock buybacks - once they’re too big to continue growing exponentially).”

I.e. LESS of this:

Ok, that’s how the fight went down.

Now, we want to know – where do you stand?

Reply to this email with your answer:

P.S. Want a closer look at buybacks and the effect they have on the market? Check out this report!

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