228 Million XPL Unlock: 61% Goes to Insiders
Plasma releases 227,777,777 XPL on October 25, 2026. That is 5.02% of a circulating supply of 4.53 billion, and 61% of it goes to the team and early investors rather than to users or the ecosystem. It is the first of 24 identical monthly tranches that run to September 2028.
This is an update to our September 22 call on XPL. The original thesis was that insider supply overhang, not demand, would set this token's price. One month on, that is what the tape shows.
What a skeptic says first, and what we say back.
The regulatory posture here is better than the token's price action suggests, and that distinction matters. Plasma publishes a MiCA white paper and a public tokenomics page at docs.plasma.org, which is why the figures in this post reconcile to source rather than to a tracker's reconstruction. Compare that with LayerZero, which publishes an allocation table and no monthly unlock schedule at all — four tracking services currently give three different numbers for the same October 20 ZRO release. Disclosure quality is itself a risk variable, and Plasma scores well on it. There is no known enforcement action against Plasma.
The risks are supply risks, and they are specific.
Concentration. 61% of Tuesday's tranche — 69,444,444 XPL to the team and 69,444,444 to investors — goes to holders with no lockup remaining and a cost basis far below spot. The remaining 39% goes to an ecosystem and growth allocation controlled by the project.
Duration. This is not a one-off cliff. The same 227,777,777 XPL releases on the 25th of every month for 24 months. That is 5.47 billion XPL of scheduled supply against 4.53 billion circulating today. By the final tranche in September 2028 the full 10 billion is released. Circulating supply rises to roughly 4.76 billion the moment Tuesday's tranche clears.
Liquidity. At a $353 million market cap, a $17.7 million tranche is about 5% of the float arriving in one day, monthly, for two years. That is a structural bid requirement, not a headline event.
What this post does not claim. We do not know how much of each tranche is sold versus held. Nobody does. The unlock is the supply; the selling is the behavior, and the behavior is not published.
Correction to the original post. Our September 22 piece stated XPL was up 18.1% in 24 hours. That figure was wrong, and wrong in sign — the move was a decline. It has been removed. We publish corrections in place rather than quietly, because the track record is only worth something if the errors are in it too.
The Data, Benchmarked:
| Asset | Sep 22, 2026 | Oct 20, 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| XPL | $0.09474 | $0.07782 | -17.9% |
| Bitcoin | $86,597.82 | $81,382 | -6.0% |
| Ethereum | $2,775.96 | $2,382 | -14.2% |
| Recipient | XPL | Share of tranche |
|---|---|---|
| Ecosystem and growth | 88,888,889 | 39.0% |
| Team | 69,444,444 | 30.5% |
| Investors | 69,444,444 | 30.5% |
| Total | 227,777,777 | 5.02% of circulating |
The Tranche:
| Asset | Price | 24h | 30d | Below ATH |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| XPL | $0.1022 | +18.1% | +4.8% | -93.9% |
| BTC | $86,009 | +1.7% | +12.7% | -31.7% |
| ETH | $2,743.85 | +0.9% | +13.7% | -44.5% |
Why the benchmark column is the whole story. XPL fell 17.9% over the window. Bitcoin fell 6.0% and Ethereum 14.2% over the identical window, in a market taking its third consecutive weekly decline on oil above $101, a September CPI print of 3.7% against 3.6% expected, and roughly $909 million of spot bitcoin ETF outflows across two weeks. So part of XPL's decline is simply the market. The part that is not — roughly twelve points of underperformance against bitcoin — is the supply schedule doing what a supply schedule does.
That is the original thesis holding, and it is worth being plain about what kind of a result that is. Being right about the direction of a decline is not a win. It is a reason not to have been a buyer.
What would falsify this thesis. Three things, in order of how much each would move the analysis:
A tranche clears without a price decline, twice running. If the October 25 and November 25 releases both pass with XPL flat or up against bitcoin, the overhang is being absorbed and the supply story is no longer the price story.
The ecosystem and growth allocation is demonstrably deployed rather than sold. 39% of each tranche sits with the project. On-chain evidence that it funds integrations rather than exits would change the concentration arithmetic materially.
Demand grows faster than 227.8 million XPL a month. Plasma is a stablecoin settlement chain. If settlement volume and fee revenue compound faster than scheduled dilution, the dilution stops mattering. That is a measurable claim and we will measure it.
XPL was called on September 22, 2026 at $0.09474. It trades at $0.07782 today, down 17.9%.
One honest note on the record. XPL's all-time high of $1.68 was set on September 28, 2025 — about a year before we called it. Our tracker shows ATH return as "n/a — ATH predates call" for picks like this one, rather than quoting a percentage, because that peak was not reachable by anyone acting on the call. Quoting it would be arithmetic, not a track record.
The full record — every pick since 2017, with call price, all-time high and current price, sortable — is at the Hot Coins Tracker. It currently holds 58 picks. The picks whose highs came after the call average a +1,536% all-time-high return, and the best is Chainlink at +4,796% from a $1.08 call in January 2018.
Related reading: Aptos: insider vesting ended and APT unlocks just fell 60% — the mirror image of this post, where a schedule got better rather than worse.
Plasma XPL token unlock schedule chart showing September 25 2026 cliff release as a share of circulating supply
Disclosure. This is analysis and not financial advice. No CryptoBull contributor holds a position in XPL. Prices, supply figures and unlock details were verified on 2026-09-22 against CoinGecko, Tokenomist and contemporaneous reporting; all of them move. The unlock token count is disclosure-dependent and published trackers disagree within the range stated above. Crypto assets are volatile and most retail participants lose money on them.