From "Who?" to "WAGMI": Lighter's Buyback Blitz Sparks 40% Token Surge

Peter Thiel-backed Lighter perpetual DEX just said "hold my beer" to critics and started aggressively buying back $LIT tokens. Because when you're backed by Big Tech's favorite contrarian, why not go full degen with your treasury management?

On April 8th, the project flexed its buyback muscles and locked away 10 million $LIT. That's 4% of the current circulating supply of 250 million tokens—which, for the uninitiated, took a dip after the December debut. A month ago, this buyback program was chilling at just 3% of circulation. Slow and steady? More like slow and sorry.

At this rate, Lighter's been vacuuming up roughly 1% of supply monthly—around 2.4 million $LIT. If the DEX keeps this up, the entire circulating supply could be locked away faster than you can say "to the moon" on a Telegram pump group. Roughly 10 months, give or take one crypto winter.

For the supply nerds keeping score at home: $LIT's total supply maxes out at 1 billion, with only 250 million currently floating around like lonely jellyfish. First unlocks don't hit until December 2026. So while retail traders panic about supply shocks, Lighter's sitting pretty with a locked treasure chest and no immediate pressure.

Enter Telegram—the privacy-obsessed messenger that's basically the encrypted group chat for people who don't trust governments, banks, or their own governments' banks. Lighter's now powering native trading with up to 50x leverage across crypto and non-crypto assets. Because apparently, Telegram decided crypto degens needed easier access to leveraged bets while waiting for their food delivery drivers to arrive.

Market reaction? Pure, uncut hopium. Since late March, $LIT's climbed over 40%, bouncing from a pitiful $0.74 low to laughing all the way past $1.13. The kind of recovery that makes diamond hands whisper "I told you so" in Discord DMs.

We wanted to know if the Telegram integration was actually doing anything besides giving Telegram traders an excuse to lose money faster. According to Lightalytics data, Lighter