Hayden Adams, the founder of Uniswap, announced on X (formerly Twitter) that he has burned 99% of the HayCoin (HAY) supply on October 20. The move came in response to concerns about excessive price speculation in the preceding days, causing most of the tokens to be removed from circulation.
Adams initially deployed the HAY token for testing purposes five years ago, prior to the launch of the Uniswap decentralized protocol. He kept more than 99.9% of the HAY tokens in his wallet, with only a small portion used for testing in a liquidity pool. Recently, the coin had been traded in a manner similar to meme coins, with prices reaching six-figure levels.
The founder of Uniswap expressed surprise at the substantial trading volumes and market speculation that had surrounded HAY in the past week. He referred to such speculative behavior as "stupid" and explained that he was uncomfortable having his profile associated with the token. As a result, he decided to burn the entire supply of HAY tokens in his wallet, which amounted to approximately $650 billion.
Burning a coin means permanently removing it from circulation, which can have an inflationary effect on prices due to the reduction in available units. Currently, the HAY token is trading at $2,392,640, marking a significant increase of over 235% within the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.
Adams' action raised concerns among some users, including the potential tax implications of token burns. Token burns could be viewed as taxable events, with one user pointing out that, assuming a cost basis of $0, the disposals of approximately $650 billion could lead to approximately $128 billion in long-term capital gains liabilities.
