PumpFun’s PUMP-token has dropped nearly 35% in value over the past month, significantly worse than the broader crypto market.
This decline occurs despite the ongoing buyback program of the platform. This has raised questions about the effectiveness of income-based support measures, especially if whales continue to sell and the market as a whole declines.
Buyback-driven demand falls short during broader sell-off
Pump.fun started a buyback program for its own PUMP token in July 2025, shortly after the token's launch. The platform uses 100% of its revenue to buy back PUMP tokens. This creates a constant and significant buying pressure every day.
Since the beginning, these buybacks have accounted for approximately $218.1 million in purchases. The network has spent $32.7 million on buybacks alone in the past 30 days.
Theoretically, token buybacks are often viewed as bullish because they reduce the supply of tokens in circulation and support demand.
Still, this aggressive income-based strategy was not enough to mitigate the effects of the broader decline in the crypto market. Since the beginning of October, the crypto market has come under increasing pressure.
The total market capitalization of crypto has decreased by nearly 30%, with major coins like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) seeing significant losses.
PUMP has not escaped this trend. The token has dropped about 35% in the past 30 days.
“PumpFun uses 100% of its income for PUMP buybacks, nearly $1 million in daily buying pressure. Yet the token is over 80% lower than its all-time high and about 30% below the previous all-time low (before the buybacks). This clearly shows that buybacks, no matter how aggressive, have limited effect in a declining market – especially when the utility of the token is weak or limited,” wrote an analyst.
The declining trend continued today, with the altcoin dropping another 6.9%. At the time of writing, PUMP is trading around $0.0017, a price last seen during the market-wide sell-off in October.
The problems for PUMP have worsened in recent days due to recent whale activity. A large whale recently sent 3,800,000,000 PUMP (approximately $7.57 million) to FalconX after holding for three months. This whale removed the tokens from Binance at a value of $19.53 million, which represents an unrealized loss of $12.22 million.
Data from Nansen shows that the balance of large investors – wallets with more than 1,000,000 PUMP tokens – has decreased by 13.07% in the past 30 days. When large holders exit at a loss, it often indicates a declining confidence in the token.
In summary, the performance of PUMP shows that even aggressive buybacks, supported by income, can do little when the market broadly declines. As long as large holders continue to sell and investors are risk-averse, buybacks alone are unlikely to provide lasting price support.
