How we score unlocks

Plain version first, details below.

The idea in one line

Strength = tokens unlocking ÷ circulating supply. Strong is 10.4% or more, about a tenth of all coins on the market arriving in one day. Medium is 5–10.4%, Small is under 5%.

Why circulating, not total supply

Only circulating coins trade today. An unlock of 2% of total supply can still be 20% of what's actually on the market. Most calendars lead with “% of total supply” or dollar value; both understate small-float coins and overstate large ones.

Why unlocks move price

When an unlock adds a large share of new coins, there are suddenly more potential sellers. Teams and early investors often paid little or nothing for their tokens, so even a lower price can be a profit for them. Traders know the dates in advance, so many sell or short early, and the pressure tends to show up before the unlock.

Research points the same way. Market maker Keyrock studied 16,000+ unlock events and found that about 90% came with negative price pressure, often starting around 30 days ahead, with team unlocks hitting hardest (Keyrock; in our own archive the recipient type did not reliably matter, see what we tested). The Tie looked at 350,000+ unlock events and found prices, on average, fell in the run-up (The Tie, 2023). Binance Research estimated about $155B of tokens unlocking from 2024 to 2030 (Binance Research, 2024).

Our own numbers

We collected 305 unlocks from 2023 to 2026 and measured each coin against Bitcoin over the 7 days before its unlock date, so the overall market mood is taken out.

• Strong (≥ 10.4%): 68 of 100 fell vs BTC, average -5.1%.
• Medium (5–10.4%): 63 of 125 fell, average +1.0%. No reliable pattern.
• Small (< 5%): 41 of 79 fell, average +1.9%. A coin toss.

How we avoided fooling ourselves

The threshold and the test were written down before the numbers were computed. Multiple comparisons were corrected (Holm). The result held on the first and second half of the sample separately, after removing the 10% largest moves, and on data collected after the test was fixed.

Limits, stated honestly

• Dates can be wrong or move. Projects delay unlocks; calendars sometimes copy errors from each other.
• Monthly (“linear”) rows are the month's total, not a one-day event. The history figures mix both kinds.
• Some coins are sold privately (OTC) and never hit the order book.
• 100 strong events is a small sample. Two in three fell; one in three did not.
• Source data occasionally doesn't add up (an unlock worth more than the coin's whole market cap). We flag those rows “data check” and leave them out of counts.

Data

Schedule: CoinMarketCap unlock calendar and DefiLlama emissions. Price, volume and market cap: CoinMarketCap. Futures availability: KuCoin and Binance contract lists. Everything on this site is in data.json (CC BY 4.0), refreshed hourly.