Who receives unlocked tokens, and do they sell?

Short answer: Teams, early investors, advisors and treasuries. Some sell at once, some never; the recipient type is a useful hint, not a rule.

Each unlock has named recipients in the project's vesting schedule: team, investors, advisors, ecosystem fund, treasury, community rewards. Token pages on this site list them with the amount each group receives.

Who is most likely to sell? Early investors often paid cents for coins that trade at dollars, so even a falling price is profit for them. Teams vary: some sell steadily, some are bound by extra rules. Treasuries and ecosystem funds usually don't sell at once; the coins move to a wallet and get spent over years.

Here our data disagrees with the popular view. Some industry studies say team or investor unlocks hit hardest. When we split our archive by recipient type, the difference was not reliable: the size of the unlock against circulating supply explained far more than who got the coins. We still show recipients on every token page, because they help you read a single case, but we don't score by them. See what we tested.

Two caveats. Some recipients sell privately (OTC) before or after the date, and the trade never appears on the exchange. And a schedule can change: projects renegotiate, delay, or re-lock. Check the project's own announcements for the final word.

Updated 2026-10-27 with the current archive. Not financial advice.

Who receives unlocked tokens, and do they sell?

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