Hyperliquid (HYPE) Unlocks 3.75M HYPE Worth $340M on October 6

Update 08:12 UTC: The OTC transfer has begun moving. Onchain Lens reported on Oct. 7 that the seven-day unstaking of the 3.75 million HYPE completed, crediting Hyperliquid Labs' spot balance, after which 1.875 million tokens went across five addresses at 375,000 each.

A Single Buyer Takes 3.75M HYPE

Hyperliquid (HYPE) releases 3.75 million HYPE tokens from its vesting schedule into circulation on Tuesday, October 6, a batch the market values at roughly $340 million. The release equals 1.69% of the token's circulating supply, and the protocol's official disclosure states that the entire allocation is assigned to a single institutional buyer. The recipient is not named, and nothing in the disclosure sets out a disposition plan, so the tokens become transferable with no published statement on whether they will be held, deployed or sold. A token unlock is the scheduled expiry of a vesting cliff: tokens allocated at genesis, or at an earlier funding round, become transferable on a fixed date. That mechanism matters here because of how the batch is concentrated. Cliffs of this size normally split across teams, early investors and ecosystem treasuries, which spreads the sell decision over many counterparties. This one hands the full amount to a single institution, so one trading desk sets the amplitude of the supply shock. How the Hyperliquid price absorbs the added float is therefore the week's clearest supply-side test for the token. One point six nine percent of supply entering in a single day registers on the tape; the same share spread over a quarter would largely pass unnoticed. The batch also lands on a venue built for active trading, a perpetual futures and margin trading stack where positioning shifts print fast, and inside the wider Hyperliquid ecosystem that has drawn both shorts and ETF demand this month. Our desk treats the release as a two-sided risk from the open: quiet accumulation absorbs the float without visible pressure, while size worked into bids meets the market directly. Both outcomes were live as of Tuesday morning, and the venue's order book depth, not the headline dollar figure, determines how much of that flow a single session clears.

A $1.11 Billion Unlock Week

Hyperliquid's release is the largest line in a first week of October that returns more than $1.11 billion of vested tokens to circulation across major projects. Ethena (ENA) unlocked 171.88 million ENA, worth $41.52 million, on October 5, equal to 1.88% of circulating supply. The Ethena Foundation restructured its payout calendar, pulling the remaining investor allocation forward into one batch instead of the previous monthly installments, so the market must absorb a lump sum rather than a series. Aptos (APT) holds the next dated release: 11.31 million APT worth $9.06 million, 0.64% of supply, on October 11. Aerodrome Finance (AERO), Linea, Movement (MOVE) and io.net (IO) add smaller, simultaneous unlocks, so cumulative selling pressure builds across the whole week rather than on one day. The schedule leaves no empty day: a release lands before, during and after the HYPE batch, so any single-day impact reads against a moving weekly baseline. Direction, on the calendar's own terms, turns on two variables: the size of each batch and the selling propensity of its recipient. Institutional allocations carry the higher risk of direct exchange inflows, while early-investor batches translate into cashing-out flows. Whether the HYPE recipient unwinds into resting bids or supplies two-sided liquidity as a market maker decides how much of the $340 million actually reaches the market, and the venue's TVL and book depth determine how easily that flow clears. October carries a seasonal reputation for strength, and more than $1.1 billion of new liquidity supply arriving inside the same window is the direct counterweight to that expectation. Positioning around the token has already been restless: we covered how traders flipped $60 million net short on the venue, while Grayscale's HYPG net inflows of $3.37 million on October 2 showed a demand-side channel working the other way. The altcoin market now watches which side the institutional recipient lands on.

The OTC transfer has begun moving. Onchain Lens reported on Oct. 7 that the seven-day unstaking of the 3.75 million HYPE completed, crediting Hyperliquid Labs' spot balance, after which 1.875 million tokens went across five addresses at 375,000 each. Lookonchain then tracked 1.25 million HYPE, roughly $110.57 million at its quoted price, returned to staking, leaving 1.875 million in wallet 0x8757 and 625,000, about $55 million, in another address. Hyperliquid's documentation fixes the staking-to-spot queue at exactly seven days, so any further unstaking of the restaked batch restarts that clock. One candidate buyer has publicly withdrawn: Hyperliquid Strategies CEO David Schamis said on Oct. 8 his firm was not the counterparty, leaving the institution unnamed. HYPE traded at $87.07, down 4.32% over 24 hours, with the decline starting before the wallet movements finished.

October 11 Closes the Calendar

An updated reading of the release puts the picture in finer grain. Unlocked-data tracking services recorded a nominal figure of roughly 9.917 million HYPE released on October 6, but the amount the team actually unstaked and allocated is estimated at about 3.75 million HYPE, and that batch is reportedly being used for an over-the-counter sale to an institutional buyer rather than dumped straight onto the open market. The structure behind the schedule is also clearer now: core contributors hold roughly 23.8% of total supply, locked for one year after genesis and released progressively since. Separately, the wider calendar adds a heavier name than previously flagged: ADI unlocks 6.99 million tokens on October 9, only about 0.7% of total supply but roughly 74.12% of its market capitalization, with MOVE releasing 162.67 million and BABY 227.1 million tokens on the same dates.

(as of 07:43 UTC) COINOTAG's read is that this week is a stress test of vesting design rather than a single liquidity event. The protocol's own disclosure is the primary record here, and it states one fact plainly: 3.75 million HYPE, 1.69% of supply, sits with one institutional purchaser as of October 6. Whatever prints on the daily candlestick from here follows that single counterparty's book, and nothing published so far describes its intentions. The published schedule is the only hard ground left: Ethena's batch went out on October 5, Hyperliquid's on October 6, and the 11.31 million APT release on October 11 is the last dated item that closes the week's calendar.