Any per-token or market-capitalization analysis depends entirely on which token count sits in the denominator. For HYPE, the figures most cited — a one-billion genesis supply at the top and a narrower “circulating supply” at the bottom — each answer a different question. We think neither is the right basis for a valuation analysis.
The table below sets out the measure we use: Outstanding Token Supply (OTS). This note explains how we derive it and why.
Representative snapshot as of June 15, 2026 (value based on token price of $65.78 per HYPE token). The live version of this table updates in real time; figures move as emissions are distributed, the Assistance Fund accumulates, fee burns continue, and core-contributor tranches vest
Source: Hypeburn.fun, hypurrscan.io.
Why one billion is the wrong anchor
HYPE’s genesis supply of 1,000,000,000 tokens, minted at launch, is best understood as analogous to a company’s authorized shares. It is a (capped) upper bound, not a measure of ownership or value. Critically, it includes large allocations that may enter circulation in the future. Valuing the token off the full one billion is equivalent to valuing a company off its authorized share count, which no analyst would do.
We therefore start from the genesis supply and remove everything that does not represent an existing or contractually committed claim on the token’s value as of today.
What we remove, and why
Future Emissions & Community Rewards. This is the largest deduction and the most important one. These tokens have been reserved for future distribution; they have not been issued. They may be released over time. We believe that these tokens could be used as incentives to stimulate trading activity, liquidity provision, staking, or any other form of ecosystem development. Because their issuance is expected to coincide with future value creation, counting them today would overstate present potential dilution. This is the closest analog to authorized-but-unissued shares set aside for a future incentive pool.
Hyper Foundation and Community Grants. We treat this category on the same basis: allocations reserved for ecosystem development and grant-making, rather than tokens outstanding in the market. They are therefore excluded from the relevant base.
Assistance Fund. These are tokens the protocol has repurchased on the open market through its fee-funded buyback mechanism and accumulated in a protocol-controlled system address. Following a December 2025 validator governance vote, they are treated as permanently removed from both circulating and total supply. We are deliberately precise on terminology here: the tokens have not been destroyed in a burn transaction. They sit at a system address that has no private key and is inaccessible absent a protocol hard fork, and the validator vote constitutes binding social consensus never to authorize such access. The economic effect is a permanent retirement — directly analogous to shares repurchased and retired into treasury — so we deduct them.
HyperCore & HyperEVM Fees. This category, by contrast, reflects tokens that have been burned in the literal sense. The protocol permanently destroys HYPE through two fee mechanisms —HyperCore protocol related burns and HyperEVM gas fees related burns— with the burned tokens removed from supply. For more details on the underlying mechanism, we refer to this very useful explanation (https://hl.eco/burns-detail). Because these burned tokens no longer exist, they are deducted.
What remains: Outstanding Token Supply
What is left after these deductions is the Outstanding Token Supply (“OTS”): tokens that either are already in circulation or are committed to identified holders under a fixed, publicly known schedule.
OTS is similar to a fully diluted shares-outstanding figure: issued shares plus granted equity that vests on a set schedule, excluding both authorized-but-unissued shares and retired treasury stock.
OTS sits deliberately between the two figures the market usually quotes — broader than reported “circulating supply”, but narrower than the one-billion genesis supply.
OTS has two components:
Core Contributors. We include the full Core Contributor allocation. These tokens are subject to vesting and lockups and are not yet entirely unlocked. The vesting schedule is fixed and published. Because the schedule is known and these tokens are expected to vest in the foreseeable future, we count them in full rather than waiting for each tranche to unlock. For the avoidance of doubt, if this were a “regular” public company, we think many if not all of these unvested amounts would not be counted in the company’s shares outstanding. Because we want to be conservative and we believe that these tokens will vest, we have included them in full.
Circulating Token Supply. The remainder is HYPE in free circulation: issued, unlocked, and freely transferable.
What we don’t remove
Our deductions are reserved for HYPE tokens that are either not yet a committed claim on value (future emissions, foundation and grant allocations) or permanently gone (the Assistance Fund and fee burns).
We do not, by contrast, deduct tokens simply because they sit out of circulation today and may remain so for some time. Lock-up status is not necessarily relevant to valuation: a token contractually committed to an identified holder is a claim on the network's value whether or not it can be moved this week — much as a vesting equity grant counts toward fully diluted shares well before it becomes transferable.
The HIP-3 deployer HYPE token requirement is illustrative: each active deployer must stake 500,000 HYPE that is protocol-locked and non-transferable for the duration of its activity. These tokens are therefore effectively removed from economic circulation while active.
There may be a case for deducting these tokens but, unlike the Assistance Fund, this HIP-3 staked tokens are not permanently retired; they are released if and when a deployer exits.
The same logic runs through the Core Contributor allocation we include in full, even if a meaningful portion remains locked. We count the tokens as a committed claim, even if unlocked team entitlements to date have been very small and the bulk of this supply is unlikely to reach the market in the near term.
A live measure
While the genesis supply is fixed (and capped), every other line item moves — emissions are distributed, the Assistance Fund continues to accumulate, fee burns continue, and core contributor tranches vest into free circulation.
The many moving parts is one of the reasons that the number of HYPE tokens outstanding is one of the questions we field most frequently from investors and research analysts.
This week we will publish the table above, together with our methodology, on our updated website (hypestrat.xyz), where the details of the OTS calculation will be shown and updated in real time.
We hope that a transparent, continuously maintained reference will provide useful insight and guidance on a measure that — given its moving parts — is otherwise difficult to pin down at any given moment.
