Wintermute sells 2.651M Optimism tokens on Binance ahead of token unlock

386 million Optimism (OP) tokens will be unlocked on May 31,
Wintermute transferred 2.651 million OP tokens to Binance and later sold all the tokens.
The OP tokens were sold for $1.63 per token.

In what is seen as avoiding losses, the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Wintermute transferred some of its Optimism (OP) tokens to a Binance crypto exchange wallet and sold the tokens ahead of the much-awaited OP token unlock.

Optimism is scheduled to release 386 million OP tokens worth about $587 million to early investors and contributors.

The unlocked tokens – 9% of the total OP supply

The unlocked tokens account for 9% of the total OP token supply and are expected to increase the token’s circulating supply by over 100%. That said, the sudden surge in supply is expected by many to cause a slight drop in OP price, which is probably the reason why Wintermute offloaded its OP tokens.

According to the on-chain analytics platform Spot on Chain, Wintermute accumulated 21.31 million OP tokens from Coinbase and Binance at an average price of $1.01. The DeFi protocol has already sold 5.9 million tokens for a total of $10.6 million leaving the protocol with 15.37 million OP tokens worth about $23 million.

Wintermute was one of the investors who took part in the Optimism Series B funding round which saw Optimism raise $150 million in addition to saving $1 billion in fees from Ethereum users.

Optimism recently announced the date for its “Bedrock” upgrade, which is expected to enhance the platform’s compatibility with the Ethereum network and reduce transaction fees.