Optimism Buyers Beware: Selling Pressure Looms – Here’s Why

Optimism's rally faces a brutal test as whales start unloading.

### The Whale Exodus Begins

On-chain data shows massive transfers to exchanges—classic prep for a dump. Retail FOMO won’t cushion this fall.

### Liquidity Crunch Ahead?

Bid books look thinner than a DeFi project’s revenue stream. Any sell-off could trigger cascading stops.

### The Institutional Wildcard

VCs locked in since the seed round are still sitting on 100x gains. Their patience isn’t infinite (and neither is your upside).

Bullish? Sure. But even crypto’s golden child isn’t immune to gravity—or the timeless tradition of profit-taking. Just ask the bagholders of 2023’s 'sure thing.'

Source: IntoTheBlock

The concentration indicator underlined the distribution of OP’s circulating supply. Nearly 60% resided within whale wallets, and a further 23.8% was with investors. Here, investors are classed as addresses holding 0.1%-1% of the supply, while whales hold 1% or more.

The low share of retail holders indicated that Optimism might not be highly decentralized, raising some concerns regarding widespread adoption. There also seemed to be the threat of whales having greater power to move prices.

Source: IntoTheBlock

The supply distribution showed that addresses holding 1M – 10M OP have been accumulating throughout the month. From holding 836.96M OP on 01 June, they accumulated nearly 50M more OP. Meanwhile, the 10M – 100M OP holders cohort sold 43M OP from their holdings.

On-chain data showed that even though on-chain activity was high, whale accumulation was not very visible. Hence, Optimism might struggle to recover from its slump since January.

Bearish pressure on OP has not abated

Source: OP/USDT on TradingView

The OBV has been sinking lower since March, highlighting how the selling volume was greater than the buying volume on green days. The swing market structure was bearish as the token slipped below its two-month range in mid-June.

The Supertrend indicator continued to flash a sell signal, and the moving averages revealed bearish momentum. However, there could be some hope for lower timeframe bullish traders.

Over the past couple of days, a bullish market structure break (white) was seen. A lower timeframe demand zone was present at $0.56, which could yield a buying opportunity for traders in the coming days.

And yet, the prevalent trend was bearish, and traders should set tight stop losses if they are planning to go long.

Disclaimer: The information presented does not constitute financial, investment, trading, or other types of advice and is solely the writer’s opinion