$875M Cryptocurrency Market Unlocked in June
Nearly $875 million worth of locked-up cryptocurrency could hit the market in June as token vesting periods for more than 30 blockchain-based projects expire.
According to data tracker Token Unlocks, the largest chunk of crypto tokens to be unlocked in June 2024 belong to Aptos (APT), Arbitrum (ARB), Starknet (STRK), and Sui (SUI).
Crypto vesting is a common practice within the crypto space to prevent tokens from being abandoned prematurely by project team members or early investors.
Using a variety of mechanisms, vesting locks up cryptocurrency tokens to prevent holders from selling them all at once, putting significant pressure on the market. This usually causes the token price to fall.
The largest tokens will be unlocked in June.
Ethereum layer 2 network Arbitrum plans to unlock 92.65 million ARB tokens worth $105.6 million on June 16. Approximately $64 million of tokens will be allocated to the project team and advisors, while $41.6 million of ARB will be released for investors.
On March 16, Arbitrum released 1.1 billion ARB tokens, worth $2.32 billion at the time. Since then, the token price has fallen more than 50%, from a high of $2.27 on March 8 to $1.13 at the time of this writing.
Layer 1 blockchain project Aptos plans to release 11.1 million APT tokens worth $102.6 million in June. On June 12, the network will unlock $12.1 million in tokens for the foundation, $29.1 million for the community, $35.9 million for core contributors, and $25.5 million for investors.
Following the two biggest unlocks in June, zero-knowledge proof project Starknet is also set to unlock millions of tokens. On June 15, ZK Protocol will release 64 million STRK tokens, worth $78 million, for early contributors and investors.
Related: $900 million in vested tokens scheduled to launch in February
Meanwhile, optimistic rollup project Optimism is set to unlock an additional 31.34 million OP tokens, worth about $78 million at the time of writing. On May 31st, the project unlocked a similar amount of tokens for core contributors and investors and plans to do the same in June.
On June 1, layer 1 blockchain platform Sui will unlock 65 million tokens worth $66 million. According to Token Unlocks, the token will be released for Series A and Series B investors, early contributors, Mysten Labs Treasury, and community reserves. The project previously launched approximately $1 billion worth of cryptocurrency tokens in May.
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