Unlocking Coins and Price Dynamics: How Investors Choose Their Strategy

Coin unlocks are a key factor in determining the volatility of cryptocurrency assets and the long-term direction of their price movements. According to analysis by IntoTheBlock, tracking token unlock charts helps investors better predict potential price jumps and adjust their portfolios. Vincent Malipaard, Head of Marketing at IntoTheBlock, in an exclusive for BeInCrypto, examined how different types of coin unlocks influence market dynamics and what conclusions investors can draw.

Linear Coin Unlocks: Continuous Supply Dilution

Token unlocks refer to the process of releasing assets that were previously frozen due to investment rounds, staking, or other capital-raising mechanisms. This process can occur gradually (linear unlocks) or suddenly (cliff unlocks), each with different implications for price.

Linear unlocks gradually increase the circulating supply over an extended period. A classic example is Bitcoin miners receiving rewards for mining new blocks, which systematically increases the amount of BTC in circulation. However, in the case of Bitcoin, daily unlocks are relatively small compared to its total market cap ($1.47 trillion as of March 2026), limiting their impact on price dynamics.

To assess the impact of linear coin unlocks, investors typically compare the volume of unlocks to the token’s daily market cap change. According to IntoTheBlock, major projects like Bitcoin ($73,560 current price) and Solana ($93.30 per SOL) show minimal relative dilution due to their scale. Meanwhile, smaller projects like Stargate (STG, $0.18) and Worldcoin (WLD, $0.43) face more significant pressure: daily unlock volumes of these assets can represent a noticeable percentage of their circulating supply, exerting constant downward pressure on price.

This difference is critical for understanding long-term price trends: projects with high daily dilution relative to market cap face ongoing downward pressure, while large assets can absorb such pressure thanks to their scale.

Cliff Unlocks: Sharp Fluctuations and Uncertainty

Cliff unlocks involve the simultaneous release of a large volume of tokens—opposite to linear unlocks. When investors suddenly gain access to a significant portion of their holdings, uncertainty arises: they may hold or start selling, potentially causing substantial price swings.

History shows various scenarios. For example, The Sandbox (SAND, current price $0.09) saw its token price rise after a major unlock in February, indicating that the market can pre-price such events. Investors often incorporate information about upcoming unlocks into their calculations before the event itself, preventing panic selling.

However, not all unlocks end positively. After major cliff unlocks, Avalanche (AVAX, $9.66) and Arbitrum (ARB, $0.11) experienced significant corrections. IntoTheBlock’s analysis shows that in these cases, broader market trends played a more decisive role than the unlocks themselves: they merely catalyzed an existing downward trend rather than being the sole cause.

Plans for large unlocks are often the subject of speculation weeks before the event. For example, Wormhole (W, current price $0.02) scheduled a unlock of 600 million tokens, representing a third of the total supply—such events require careful attention from investors and traders.

Circulating Supply: The True Growth Indicator

However, token unlocks themselves are not the only factor worth considering. A critically important metric is the percentage of circulating supply relative to the fully diluted supply. When this gap is large—as with Worldcoin (fully diluted market cap of $4.25 billion versus current circulating cap of $1.23 billion)—it signals significant potential for future dilution.

Worldcoin exemplifies this dilemma: despite a current price of $0.43 per token, if the entire supply were in circulation, the project’s market cap would be much higher, exerting pressure on the price. This limits the long-term growth potential of the asset regardless of current unlocks.

A similar situation exists with Bittensor and other projects with low circulating supply percentages: investors should consider not only current unlocks but also the entire trajectory of future unlocks to properly assess risks.

Practical Strategy: Using Unlock Data in Investing

Analyzing unlock data enables investors to develop more informed strategies. First, it’s important to differentiate the scale of unlocks relative to market cap: large unlocks as a percentage of market cap require closer scrutiny.

Second, timing matters: information about upcoming unlocks is often already priced in weeks before the event, so catastrophic scenarios are rare. Third, overall market trends often outweigh the impact of unlocks themselves—rising markets can absorb even large unlocks, while in bear markets, they may accelerate declines.

For serious investors, regularly monitoring unlock charts via analytical platforms like IntoTheBlock becomes an essential part of portfolio management. This helps identify potential entry and exit points and evaluate the long-term potential of tokens considering all scheduled unlocks.