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Token unlocks

Scheduled releases of locked crypto tokens to teams, investors and ecosystems, and how prices behave before, during and after them.

Most crypto projects release their tokens on a schedule: cliffs and monthly tranches for the team, early investors and the ecosystem fund, published months in advance. Each release adds supply that the market has to absorb, and the largest ones are followed as closely as earnings dates.

The price effect is less predictable than the calendar. Some tokens weaken into an unlock as holders sell ahead of it, others rally into it and fade after, and the deciding factor is usually the size of the release relative to daily trading volume. Our coverage records what each large unlock actually did.