$40B Altcoin Unlock Looms—Locked Token Holders Brace for 50% Bloodbath

Crypto’s ’HODL’ mantra faces its reckoning as $40 billion in altcoins prepares to flood the market. Early investors now stare down the barrel of 50% losses—turns out ’financial innovation’ still obeys the laws of supply and demand.

Projects that promised moon shots via token locks now face gravity’s pull. The unlock tsunami could trigger a sell-off frenzy—because nothing boosts confidence like a stampede for the exits.

Bonus jab: Wall Street’s ’smart money’ will probably buy the dip... right after they finish shorting retail investors into oblivion.

Locked Tokens Underperform Amid Market Decline

Sabharwal’s analysis highlighted that many investors missed opportunities to exit at double today’s prices in 2024, as market conditions led to widespread devaluations across major tokens. Unreleased token deals are often made early with long-term expectations, but over the past year, market changes and project-specific issues have led to heavy losses.

Almost all the tracked projects have seen large drops in value. Scroll (SCR) and Blast (BLAST) were hit the worst, falling by 85% and 88% respectively. Eigenlayer (EIGEN) followed with a 75% drop. Other projects like zksync (ZK) at -64%, Wormhole (W) at -50%, and io.net (IO) at -48% also saw sharp declines. Jito was the only project to post gains, rising 75% over the same period.

Overall, these early-stage token investors who committed to locked positions faced greater losses than the general crypto market. Data from Artemis shows the broader market declined by an average of 40.7% during the same timeframe, about 20% less than the average loss for locked tokens.

Investors Are Facing More Losses

Further, when factoring in liquidity value over the past 12 months, such holders lost another 31% in opportunity cost when compared to Bitcoin (BTC), which gained 45% during the same period. On top of that, with over $40 billion in locked altcoins set to be released soon, sellers are now facing another 50% discount when exiting through OTC markets.

Based on this data, $1 invested a year ago would now be worth $1.45 in BTC. On the other hand, that same $1 held in an unreleased coin is now worth $0.50. Further, with the current OTC discount, it would sell for only $0.25. This results in a total value loss of approximately 82.8% compared to BTC, and 75% compared to the USD.

The analyst also noted that since most cryptocurrencies are reaching the end of their cliff periods in 2025, discounts are slightly lower now due to shorter vesting durations.

Locked tokens usually come with vesting schedules or restrictions that delay when they can be sold. This leaves holders exposed to price changes during the lock-up period, as they cannot immediately liquidate their holdings.