HYPE drops by 62%, liquidity pressure emerges after unlocking wave

【Blockchain Rhythm】HYPE has recently taken a pretty hard fall. As of December 19, the market shows that this coin has dropped 7.7% in 24 hours, with the current price falling to $22.4, hitting a new low since May 8 of this year. Even more heartbreaking, compared to its all-time high of $59.4, it has already fallen over 62%, and the total market capitalization has shrunk to $7.6 billion.

The background of this decline needs to be traced back—Hyperliquid’s first token unlock happened as early as 15:30 Beijing time on November 29. During that event, $312 million worth of 9.92 million HYPE tokens were unlocked, accounting for 2.66% of the circulating supply at the time. Interestingly, the token price reacted relatively calmly on the unlock day, staying at $34.4, without any major plunge. It’s worth noting that this was the first unlock since TGE.

But the subsequent situation became more complicated. According to the official Medium post, core contributors’ tokens were locked for one year after TGE, with most of the vesting period extending into 2027 and 2028. This means more unlock waves are still to come. The current token price performance somewhat reflects the market’s early digestion of this release cycle. In the short term, liquidity pressure is indeed present.