Everyone keeps talking about HIP-3, permissionless perps, cross-asset expansion, staking sinks, and the "Hyperliquid will absorb everything through buybacks" narrative. But if you strip away the noise and look at the system mechanically, one thing dominates the next 3 days: The Supply Math. Nothing else matters until this settles. Let’s run the numbers properly. 1. The Unlock On November 29, the Core Contributor and Investor cliff hits - 9.92M $HYPE At a current price of ~$33.70, that is: 9.92M × $33.70 ≈ $334,000,000 $334M of new supply entering the float. This is not a soft unlock. It is a massive liquidity event equivalent to 100 days of normal emissions hitting the book at once. --- 2. The Buyback Counterweight People are underestimating the buyback engine, but overestimating its speed. Hyperliquid is currently redirecting 97%–99% of fees to the Assistance Fund/Buybacks. The current run rate is roughly $80M per month in absorption power Sounds bullish? It is But not for this weekend. The buyback capacity is: >Revenue-dependent (volume must stay high) >Continuous (not front-loaded) >Time-distributed (daily TWAP execution) It buys continuously, not instantly. • Unlock Day Supply Shock: ~$334M • Unlock Day Buyback Capacity: ~$2.6M That’s a ratio of 4 months of perfect revenue capture needed to neutralize unlocks. No protocol on earth can neutralize that delta in the same week mechanically. --- 3. HIP-3 Doesn’t Help Today HIP-3 is structurally bullish: • 500K HYPE staking (~$16.8M) required to deploy markets. • Non-crypto perps bringing new flow • 50/50 fee splits injecting more buyback fuel • Real revenue, not inflation • First mover advantage in on-chain tradfi markets But this is a slow sink. To absorb the $334M unlock instantly via HIP-3, we would need 20 new institutional market deployers to bond $16.8M each this weekend. It won't happen in 3 days --- 4. The Verdict Right now, HYPE is holding the $33 range. To hold this price through Saturday, the market needs: • Enough liquidity depth • ~$200M of speculative spot bids stepping in front of the TWAP. Historically (across UNI, OP, APT, ARB, DYDX, and even SOL in early epochs), unlocks of this magnitude almost never pass cleanly. If HYPE holds its level, it signals something extraordinary: Organic demand strong enough to front-run the protocol's own buyback machine. So here’s the real question: Do you believe the market has enough genuine, non-reflexive capital ready to absorb a $334M cliff in the next 3 days or are we about to find out the difference between long-term fundamentals and short-term math?