Token Unlock

Glossary · Whales & On-Chain

A token unlock is the scheduled release of tokens that were locked at launch — allocations to the team, investors, foundation or ecosystem that vest over time. A cliff unlock releases a block on one date; a linear unlock drips continuously. Unlocks add supply that was not tradeable before, and the recipients often paid a fraction of the market price.

"The investors got in at $0.02 and their 40 million tokens unlock Tuesday. You are not competing with the chart; you are competing with their cost basis."

The size that matters is the unlock as a share of circulating supply, not the dollar figure: 2% of circulating hitting the market on one day is meaningful, 0.1% dripping daily is priced in. Cliffs are the events — a team cliff a year after launch, an investor cliff at month twelve — and the pattern around them is well documented: weakness into the date as holders front-run, and either relief after (if the recipients hold) or a slide (if they sell into it).

How to trade around them: know the date, the category and the share of supply before holding through it; avoid being long a coin into a cliff above 1% of supply unless the flow says otherwise; and watch what price does in the week after — recipients who did not sell on day one tend not to sell at all. Our coin pages carry the schedule when the data source is on.

Coin pages: supply, funding and the record

Related jargon

Questions

What is Token Unlock in crypto trading?

A token unlock is the scheduled release of tokens that were locked at launch — allocations to the team, investors, foundation or ecosystem that vest over time. A cliff unlock releases a block on one date; a linear unlock drips continuously. Unlocks add supply that was not tradeable before, and the recipients often paid a fraction of the market price.

How would a trader say it?

The investors got in at $0.02 and their 40 million tokens unlock Tuesday. You are not competing with the chart; you are competing with their cost basis.

Part of the Crypto Jargon glossary — every term, decoded the way a trader would say it.

Crypto Jargon

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