Ripple and Avalanche lead August’s massive token unlocks of over $1 billion

The cryptocurrency market is expected to see over $1 billion in token unlocks in August. Notable projects, such as Avalanche and Ripple, will lead the pack.

According to data from crypto tracker Token Unlocks, a large chunk of that number would be comprised of XRP tokens, the native token of the XRP ledger.

Significant token unlocks on August 1

On August 1, Ripple, the firm behind the XRP Ledger, will unlock 1 billion tokens as part of its scheduled unlock plan.

In 2017, Ripple initially locked 55 billion XRP in an Escrow to control the supply of XRP entering the market.

The tokens are unlocked from two different wallets controlled by Ripple. The 1 billion XRP tokens are valued at $607 million based on current prices.

Since January 2024, Ripple has sold 1.826 billion XRP with unlocks every month. 

Layer 1 blockchain Sui is also set to release 64 million tokens on August 1. This would unlock 2.56% of its circulating supply, valued at $50 million at current prices. 

Meanwhile, decentralised exchange dYdX will release 3.65% of its circulating supply, comprising 8.33 million tokens.  The tokens are worth approximately $11 million.

ZetaChain, another layer 1 blockchain, will also unlock 18.9% of its circulating supply on the same day. The $34.5 million worth of tokens amount to 53.9 million tokens hitting the market.

These projects, alongside Ripple’s XRP, account for approximately $700 million worth of tokens set to be unlocked on the first day of August.

Other major tokens set to be unlocked in August include Avalanche. On August 20, the project will release 9.4 million AVAX into the market.

This accounts for 2.3% of the project’s circulating supply, valued at $268 million at the time of writing. 

This follows the project’s July unlock of $245 million worth of tokens. 

On August 3, cross-chain data transfer protocol Wormhole is set to release 600 million of its native W tokens. This release comprises 6.02% of the project’s maximum supply.

According to official documents, the unlock is a part of the project’s plan to release 82% of locked tokens at an average rate of 1.71% of the total supply every month.

Potential price impact

Typically, large token unlocks result in increased selling pressure. For instance, earlier this month, Aptos unlocked $69.44 million worth of APT tokens.

As earlier reported by Invezz, the unlock pushed the price of APT from $6.31 on July 11 down to $5.95 following the July 12 unlock. 

Among the aforementioned assets, only ZETA was down a mere 0.1% over the past 24 hours, with all other tokens marking gains.

Meanwhile, crypto analyst Charting Guy expects a bullish rally for XRP despite the looming token unlock.

AVAX also had some bullish predictions for the coming weeks, with analyst Immortal expecting a rally to over $40.

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