Aptos price rises 10% in 24 hours features among biggest gainers ahead of $525 million worth of token unlocks

Aptos (APT) made a 10% breakout on August 10, catapulting its market value past the 50-day Moving Average (MA) at $6.227 before pulling back. With momentum indicators pointing to a continued uptrend, investors are looking to the oncoming token unlocks event as the pivot for their trades. 

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Token unlocks worth $525 million set for this month

Millions of tokens are slated for unlocking across August, with The Sandbox (SAND), Avalanche (AVAX), Hedera (HBAR), Optimism (OP) and Aptos (APT) ranking among the top five in volume of unlocks totaling a staggering $525 million worth of tokens.

August token unlocks

Possible scenarios around token unlock events

With the current shaky atmosphere in the crypto sphere, crypto holders scrutinize all metrics to establish the possibility of their holdings appreciating. Token unlocks features among these metrics, influencing an asset’s circulating supply. The idea of more tokens coming into the market is typically bearish as it increases the circulating supply.

On the other hand, it could spark a striking rally because sometimes the demand for a specific token increases so much so that buyers gobble them up during token unlocks periods. In this case, an expected token unlocks could bolster confidence among the market players, as it leads to liquidity increment and therefore a demonstration of project longevity.

For a bear market, however, token unlocks tend to reduce token value. Before the unlocks, investors could short the currency due to a combination of growing supply and plummeting demand. This leads to price slump.

It is also possible that a token’s price is not affected during token unlocks particularly when the number of tokens set for unlocking is small, not enough to disturb the circulating supply of the project. Another possible reason for such an outcome is that the event was already priced in.

Price implications ahead of August token unlocks

For the record, these will all be cliff token unlocks, meaning the tokens have been set to unlock on a schedule that is more periodic than daily, and not the traditional weekly, monthly, or yearly periodicals. Unlike the linear method of unlocks, where the tokens are paid out on a linear schedule, say monthly or yearly, thus delivering some level of price stability, cliff unlocks are different.

With the bulk of the volume of the token’s supply already in circulation, the tokens slated for unlocking later in the month will go to the community project’s team, comprising core contributors or advisors, developers, and investors.

These define a stakeholder cohort that is likely to offload their holdings to the market, making them available for claim. The ensuing selling pressure could lead to a price slump for SAND, AVAX, HBAR, OP, and APT. For Optimism in particular, given the Layer-2  token has had massive hype around it recently, the unlocks event could trigger a significant value drop.

Before that, however, the prices of some of these tokens are on an uptrend, including OP. This is possible, as investors embrace the ‘buy the rumor, sell the event’ narrative.

SAND/USDT 1-day chart, AVAX/USDT 1-day chart, HBAR/USDT 1-day chart, OP/USDT 1-day chart, APT/USDT 1-day chart

Regardless of how the token unlocks event, a notable price slump across altcoins would be ideal, providing an entry point for willing investors, ahead of the next bull run.

With expected selling pressure following these unlocks, late sellers could be left watching as investors look for possible accumulation boxes to grow their holdings.