According to data from “Token Unlocks,” in November the Aptos project will release 20 million APTs, or about 112% of the total daily trading volume, which could be frowned upon by investors and trigger a downturn for crypto.
However, for now the focus is on 3 distinct cryptocurrencies, as there could be major liquidity releases as early as September.
We are talking about SOL, APE and OP. Are these altcoins in danger?
Let’s see all the details together.
Summary
Crypto: the plan for the release of 20 million APT by layer-1 Aptos
The layer-1 Aptos blockchain protocol will release a whopping 20 million APT to the market on 12 November 2023, according to a crypto vesting plan tracked by the “Token Unlocks” source.
The figure will obviously contribute to increased selling pressure for the cryptocurrency, which will face strong speculative positions from traders.
In a nutshell, the unlock is equivalent to $103.8 million, if we consider the current market price of APT at $5.19, representing more than 8.5% of Aptos’ circulating supply.
Very often crypto projects set up these kinds of plans to prevent trading partners and early investors from liquidating their positions all at once, causing the value in the coin market to plummet.
For Aptos there has already been another token release 2 days ago, with $24.85 million in crypto poured into the hands of investors. In this case, though, there was no negative influence on APT’s price, and on that day, the crypto saw an increase of 0.50%.
In any case, according to research firm The Tie, the November release will free up a large amount of liquidity that could impact its prices in a strongly negative way.
In total, 20 million APT corresponds to 112% of the average volume traded on exchanges over the past 30 days.
The situation for the crypto of Aptos founders, former Facebook engineers, risks the collapse of its value considering the fact that another 6.15 million APT will also be released in December according to a monthly distribution plan.
Derivatives traders in the digital currency market seem to be predominantly bearish on APT.
We can easily see this from the “funding rates” metric of perpetual swaps, which by adding up all open positions on the Binance, Bybit, Okx, Bitget, BingX, and Huobi exchanges, shows a clear prevalence of short positions.
Indeed, it is the short sellers who are paying the longs to keep their trades open with the funding rate peaking yesterday at a negative 0.0396% per 8 hours.
Parallel to all this, in the futures markets we can observe a rising open interest in recent days with the number of active contracts reaching the figure of 5.33 million APT on Wednesday, reaching the highest since 17 August.
The situation shows a clear skew toward bearish positions and the market may reverse this trend soon to bring values back to normal.
If open interest continues to rise in the coming days, the price of APT will probably also react well by quickly recovering the $5.50 mark.
Upcoming token unlocks in September: eyes on SOL, APE and OP
In recent days, the fears of traders are not only related solely to the Aptos coin but also to the crypto assets SOL, APE and OP, which are expecting very substantial unblockings in September.
For APE and OP, vesting plans speak of a coin release equal to a respective countervalue of $54.41 million and $31.89 million.
For APE, the date set is 17 September by which 11.02% of the circulating supply will be released, while for OP the event is dated 30 September and will see a release of 3.03% of the circulating supply.
The currency representing the most important NFT projects looks much worse off graphically than that of Optimism‘s decentralized infrastructure, and traders are more likely to threaten the price action of the former given the high inflationary factor present in tokenomics.
Crypto DYDX also awaits a $13.63 million release on 26 September but it will probably not be decisive in changing the coin’s price action.
In the last few hours, eyes are not really focused on Aptos’ currency nor on the crypto assets mentioned above but solely and exclusively on SOL after FTX received approval from a Wilmington, Delaware, court to liquidate its share of remaining cryptocurrencies.
Yesterday, in fact, US Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey approved the exchange’s request to liquidate its assets as part of the company’s liquidation process to restore investors while minimizing the inherent volatility risks of the market
In total, FTX’s owned crypto totals $3 billion, with a record $685 million in SOL, $529 million in FTT, and $268 million in BTC.
APT is also on the list in crypto assets ready to be dumped on the market with a countervalue of $67 million.
Although the situation may seem extremely dangerous, well-known Twitter user “AshCrypto” points out that FTX is unable to sell more than $100 million per week according to the court order, and that many assets will probably be sold OTC, without much impact on the markets.
Moreover, to the delight of Solana supporters, it should be mentioned that most of the SOL tokens held by FTX are in vesting and will be unlocked between 2025 and 2028.
BTC and ETH holdings are high but far from the multi-billion dollar valuations of the top 2 crypto assets.
