Wintermute moves over $4M of Optimism to Binance ahead of token unlock

May 30, 2023 Alex Rustok

Decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Wintermute has transferred its Optimism (OP) tokens to a Binance exchange wallet ahead of the upcoming unlock that’s scheduled to release $587 million worth of tokens into the market. 

On May 31, 386 million OP tokens will be unlocked for early contributors and investors. The amount of tokens that will be released into the market accounts for 9% of the total supply. The tokens are worth around $587 million and are expected to increase the circulating supply by over 100%.

Seemingly preparing for the token unlock, Wintermute’s wallet has transferred 2.651 million OP —worth $4.31 million — to Binance in the past two days. According to the on-chain analytics platform Spot on Chain, the DeFi platform and crypto market maker has already sold the tokens for $1.63 per OP.

The company accumulated a total of 21.31 million OP tokens from crypto exchanges Binance and Coinbase at an average price of $1.01. Wintermute has already sold 5.9 million tokens for $10.6 million and still holds 15.37 million OP, worth around $23.4 million at the time of writing. 

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Last year, the Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution Optimism raised $150 million in a Series B round, led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Paradigm, as it saved $1 billion in fees for Ethereum users. According to Crunchbase, Wintermute was one of the investors who participated in this round.

Meanwhile, the platform is set to go through a major upgrade on June 6. On May 16, Optimism announced the date for its “Bedrock” upgrade that’s expected to reduce transaction fees and enhance its compatibility with the Ethereum network.

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