Written by: Maher, Foresight News
By the end of July 2026, data from on-chain analysis analyst MLM (@mlmabc) shows that since the actual allocation of team tokens began in December 2025, approximately 4.93 million HYPE has entered team members' wallets, equivalent to about 270 million USD at that time's price, accounting for 0.493% of the total supply. Among them, 1.19 million were sold on the open market, cashing out approximately 32.5 million USD, 3.14 million were transferred to over-the-counter trading platforms, with a value of approximately 132 million USD at the time of transfer, totaling about 4.33 million coins corresponding to 165 million USD. During the same period, the Assistance Fund repurchased about 9.8 million coins, spending approximately 364 million USD, at a speed more than twice that of the team's sales.
The price of HYPE has dropped from a high of 70 USD in late July to the current price of 52.4 USD, with a market capitalization of 13.23 billion USD.
So, what factors have caused the significant correction of HYPE? Is the core team's selling really the most important factor?
Details of Team's Actual Coin Selling: Limited Allocation, Controllable Sales
According to the project's tokenomics, the total supply of HYPE is capped at 1 billion coins, with no additional inflation design. The main distribution is approximately as follows: Genesis allocation about 31% (fully released at TGE, mainly airdrop for early users); future emissions and community rewards about 38.9%, foundation budget about 6%, and small portions like community grants. The core contributors of Hyperliquid account for 23.8% of the total supply, which is 238 million coins.
Hyperliquid is officially designed to cliff unlock one year after TGE (November 29, 2024), followed by linear release, with most planned to be completed between 2027 and 2028. Theoretically, the amount that can be released monthly was exaggerated by some tracking platforms to nearly 10 million coins, but the actual allocation is far below this.
MLM's tracking, combined with tools like Qwantify, shows that from December 2025 to the end of July 2026, the total amount allocated to team members' related wallets was about 4.93 million coins. The early months had higher amounts (approximately 1.75 million in December, about 1.2 million in January), followed by a noticeable convergence (140,000 in February, 173,000 in March, 333,000 in April, 533,000 in May, 452,000 in June, and about 433,000 in July).
The cumulative actual release is far below the "theoretical value" on some unlock calendars because the team did not fully claim the allocations and there is staking and holding behavior.
The 1.19 million coins sold by its core members on the open market, valued at approximately 32.5 million USD, were mostly small TWAP trades. The larger part was transferred to known OTC merchants. Generally, OTC transfers are often counted as potential selling pressure in on-chain analysis, but the actual transaction price, timing, and whether it all materialized carries uncertainty.
Cumulative Buyback Exceeds 1.02 Billion USD
99% of Hyperliquid's transaction fees flow into the Assistance Fund, used for continual buying of HYPE on the open market. This mechanism directly converts protocol revenue into sustained buying pressure on the token. According to the latest data from asxn, the protocol has cumulatively repurchased over 1 billion USD, with the fund holding exceeding 45 million coins in mid-2026.
Since the team began actual allocations in December 2025, the Assistance Fund has repurchased about 9.8 million coins, spending about 364 million USD, averaging about 1.23 million coins and approximately 46 million USD per month. This speed is more than twice that of the team's (including former members) selling rate.
In June 2026, Hyperliquid's protocol revenue was still high, but after trading volume declined and revenue dropped in July, the pace of buybacks also slowed down, although buying pressure was still maintained.
In other words, the team’s limited selling is absorbed by the protocol’s own revenue buyback. However, when market sentiment is lukewarm and trading volume shrinks, the funds that support Hyperliquid buybacks will also decrease, thereby putting pressure on the price's buying.
Whales Selling Coins, HYPE Spot ETF Net Outflows
After HYPE peaked at about 76 USD in mid-June 2026, it dropped approximately 30%. Simply attributing this adjustment to "team unlock dumping" is not accurate. Some venture capital funds have unstaked and sold coins, and the continuous daily net outflows of the HYPE spot ETF are also significant factors affecting the price drop.
In July 2026, funds that previously bought HYPE in the secondary market, such as Multicoin Capital and related wallets from a16z, showed large-scale unstaking, followed by records of funds flowing to exchanges.
On July 22, monitoring by Yujin indicated that an address suspected to be related to Multicoin Capital (starting with 0xaB3) sold 607,000 HYPE, valued at 37 million USD. These HYPE were purchased 5 months ago through Galaxy Digital OTC, priced at 30 USD, of which 210,000 HYPE were staked, and 395,000 HYPE remained in the wallet.
Tushar Jain, co-founder of Multicoin, stated that the unstaking was not for selling but due to the wallet being heavily tracked, requiring regular address rotation for privacy protection.
On July 29, after transferring 395,000 HYPE (37 million USD) to Coinbase, Multicoin Capital continued to redeem more HYPE staking. Additionally, 1.97 million HYPE (108 million USD) successfully exited staking after a 7-day unlocking period. Successfully redeemed HYPE included 86,000 coins (4.78 million USD) that were previously transferred to Coinbase Prime.
a16z also engaged in high selling and low buying, with Onchain Lens monitoring its reduction of HYPE worth 10.19 million USD in the past two days on July 1, followed by a sale of 421,800 tokens worth approximately 25.3 million USD on July 18. Until July 30, a16z-related addresses began to purchase HYPE tokens again, accumulating 132,056 HYPE from exchanges, valued at approximately 7.335 million USD, with an average withdrawal price of 55.54 USD.
The capital flow of the HYPE spot ETF is also not optimistic.
Since early July this year, the HYPE spot ETF has seen continuous net outflows, averaging around 1 million USD per day for several weeks, contrasting sharply with the significant net inflows in May and June of this year. On June 25, the HYPE spot ETF experienced a single-day net inflow of 108.09 million USD, setting a new historical record for net inflows.
As of now, the total cumulative net inflow of its spot ETF is 277.98 million USD.
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