Whale Withdraws $122M Hype Ahead Of $11.9B Team Unlock

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 (HYPE) tokens on Monday, which were acquired for about $12 per token.

The whale was sitting on around $90 million of unrealized profit nine months after buying the tokens and is likely “selling for profit,” according to blockchain data platform Lookonchain.

The selling comes as the HYPE token rallied to a new all-time high of $59.29 on Thursday, but faces its first major test in November when team tokens begin vesting.

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According 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 “first true test” for the resilience of the token, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes’ family office fund, Maelstrom, said 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.

Related: ‘Diamond hand’ investor turns $1K into $1M as BNB tops $1,000

Hayes sells HYPE stash for Ferrari ahead of vesting schedule

Maelstrom’s research was published shortly after Hayes sold all 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 said on Sept. 21. 

Other whales appear 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 post.

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 CoinMarketCap data.