Celestia’s $1B TIA Unlock: Market Positioned for Less Impact Than Feared

• Only half of the +$1 billion TIA from token unlock could make it to market.
• Will reduced sell-off risk boost TIA prospects?

According to an OTC (over-the-counter) dealer, Celestia is over $1 billion value of TIA token unlock may not experience as intense selling pressure as previously expected.

Taran Sabharwal, founder of crypto OTC company Stix, predicted that the selling pressure could reach half of the unlocked tokens (188.5 million tokens), as only half have not been deployed for the October 31 sell-off. He said,

“We have summarized that a total of $92.3 million TIA will be liquid after unlocking, which would act as the upper limit of overall spot selling pressure.”

He added:

“This amounts to a maximum selling pressure of ~$460 million. What’s also interesting here is that this makes up <50% of the total cliff unlocks, meaning the selling pressure is half of what people expected.”

Source: STIX

Better for TIA price?

Commenting on the potential impact of the unlock on TIA price, Sabharwal said this would be a bullish signal for spot buyers as more shorts would be opened during the initial unlock.

“We expect many of these short positions to continue to unwind, offsetting some of the pressure on spot selling. This funding reset could be a bull signal for spot buyers.”

Other users endorsed the bullish outlook and expected any potential dip to be a good return for long positions. A noted,

“As unlocks are absorbed by the market and shorts start to cover, it could be one of the best entries on $TIA for those bullish on the ETH modularity story.”

Another user, Simon Dedic, a partner at crypto VC Moonrock Capital, acknowledged the short-term volatility for TIA but noted that it was overall a bullish setup. He said,

“While we may see volatility in the short term, this could ultimately be a hugely bullish situation. With Celestia positioning itself as the key layer for data availability, $TIA could well make its own $SOL-like move.”

But Ignas, a DeFi analyst, noted that prolonged bleeding could not be excluded. This could even be complicated by the ongoing FUD that Celestia only generated $15,000 since its debut (October 2023).

Market positioning

Source: Coinglass

That said, the marketing positioning on Binance at the time of writing was skewed toward bullish bets. In fact, long positions have increased over the past three days, from 55% to over 60%. This showed that traders were expecting a potential TIA recovery.

Read Celestia [TIA] Price prediction 2024-2025

In the meantime, $4.5 has been a key short-term target to watch as the recent pullback has stalled since early September. Any crack below could drag TIA to a low near $3.5.

Source: TIA/USDT, TradingView