According to CoinDesk, the price of Optimism (OP) has decreased as the Ethereum scaling network's native token prepares for an increase in its circulating supply this week. A scheduled unlocking event will take place on Saturday, releasing 24.16 million OP tokens, or 3% of its circulating supply, worth approximately $30 million. Of these assets, $16 million will be issued to core contributors of the project, while $14 million are designated for investors. Cryptocurrency projects often lock a portion of the token's supply and release it gradually to prevent early investors and insiders from selling large quantities immediately after receiving allocations. When tokens are unlocked, they become available for sale, which can lead to price drops.
In the past 24 hours, OP has dropped 3.6%, significantly underperforming the mostly range-bound crypto markets. The CoinDesk Market Index (CMI) is down 0.5% during the same period, while the CoinDesk Smart Contract Platform Index (SMT), which includes the OP token, is roughly flat. The token has lost about 10% of its value in a week, making it the worst performer among the top 50 digital assets. A report from crypto services provider Matrixport earlier this month predicted that the price of alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins) would likely struggle for the rest of the year against bitcoin (BTC), partly due to token unlocks weighing on the market.
