The whale started withdrawing their HYPE tokens after nine months of holding, with an unrealized profit of about $90 million.
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Update Sept. 22, 1:31 p.m. UTC: This article has been updated to include quotes from Nicolai Sondergaard, research analyst at crypto intelligence platform Nansen.
Large cryptocurrency investors, or whales, are cashing out of Hyperliquid’s native token as concerns grow over an upcoming vesting schedule that could unleash about $11 billion worth of supply.
Whale wallet “0x316f” withdrew $122 million worth of Hyperliquid () tokens on Monday, which had been acquired for about $12 per token.
The whale was sitting on about $90 million of unrealized profit nine months after buying the tokens and is likely “selling for profit,” to blockchain data platform Lookonchain.
The selling comes as the HYPE token on Thursday, but faces its first major test in November when team tokens begin vesting.
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to the Hyper Foundation, 23.8% of the total supply allocated to core contributors will start unlocking on Nov. 29, a year after the project’s genesis event.
The vesting schedule will distribute about $11.9 billion HYPE tokens over 24 months for the team, which may be the for the resilience of the token, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes’ family office fund, Maelstrom, on Monday.
In what it dubbed a “Sword of Damocles” moment, it will introduce about $500 million worth of monthly unlocks, of which only about 17% will be absorbed by buybacks, leaving about $410 million in potential supply overhang, according to Maelstrom researcher Lukas Ruppert.
“Token unlocks generally can create some sell pressure,” which is not necessarily tied to a token’s “fundamentals,” according to Nicolai Sondergaard, research analyst at crypto intelligence platform Nansen.
Sondergaard pointed out that not all recipients will sell, with some holding their tokens to signal confidence in the project.
“While some degree of selling pressure is possible around unlock events, the actual outcome will depend on how both the team and token holders respond.”
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Maelstrom’s research was published shortly after his HYPE tokens, which he apparently used to pay the deposit for a new Ferrari, Cointelegraph reported earlier on Monday.
“Need to pay my deposit on the new Rari 849 Testarossa,” Hayes on Sunday.
Other whales appeared to be shifting to Hyperliquid’s emerging competitor, Aster, a decentralized perpetuals exchange linked to Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao.
On Monday, whale address “0x220” bought $10.5 million worth of Aster tokens across two wallets and is currently holding over $6 million in unrealized profit, Lookonchain said in a Monday X .
Over the past week, the Aster token rose by more than 1,700% to become the industry’s fourth-largest DEX token with a market capitalization of $2.5 billion.
The HYPE token fell 7.9% during the same period to trade at $49.34 at the time of writing, according to data.
