Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan said the crypto market is likely to expand around projects that generate profits, arguing that investors still have not fully repriced protocols that return economic value to token holders through buybacks and burns. In an August 12 memo, he identified Hyperliquid, Uniswap, Aave, Pump.fun and Lighter as examples of protocols that now route part of their revenue into repurchasing or burning their own tokens, a model he said was largely absent before 2025. Hougan said Hyperliquid has spent more than $1.3 billion buying HYPE since its November 2024 launch and directs roughly 99% of fee revenue to buybacks and burns, while Uniswap has burned 107 million UNI, Aave expanded its buyback program under Aavenomics 3.0, Pump.fun has burned $370 million of PUMP equal to 36% of circulating supply, and Lighter has repurchased about 6% of LIT circulating supply. He also pointed to tokenomics changes at Solana and Aptos, including a Solana proposal that would increase fee burn by up to 14 times and Aptos gas fee increases that lifted annual token burn from about 90,000 tokens to roughly 1.9 million. Hougan said Hyperliquid trades at roughly 17 to 60 times earnings depending on whether circulating or fully diluted supply is used, while cautioning that crypto assets are not equities, do not carry legal claims on cash flow, and remain subject to governance changes. He argued valuations could double or more if markets continue to reward a durable link between protocol revenue and token value. Separate Q2 research from Four Pillars and GLC Research showed Hyperliquid revenue fell 6.6% quarter-over-quarter and 11.8% year-over-year to $169.37 million, though the report said the decline reflected deliberate pricing rather than weaker demand.