The supply of pre-mined coins like TRX and Ripple’s XRP is, in essence, left in the hands of the founders. In most cases, the creators have a certain schedule for releasing the locked-up coins which reduce the possibility of dumping so many coins on the market at once – thus boosting investor confidence.
Tron Foundation is poised to release 33 billion TRX tokens today, January 1st, 2020. With the total supply of TRX now standing at 99 billion, today’s release is spooking long-term TRX holders as it could be catastrophic for the already beleaguered coin.
TRX On Shaky Ground On Last Day Of 2019
Tron (TRX) is down by 1.9 percent at press time. Zooming out to the weekly chart, TRX is rather bearish with losses amounting to 3.6 percent. The coin is now twelfth-ranked with a market capitalization of 897.83 million, according to data by CoinMarketCap. Year-to-date, TRX has lost 32.4 percent despite Sun’s bold marketing antics throughout the year. During the same period, rival projects like Tezos (XTZ), is up by as much as 178.6 percent since January.
As investors grapple with today’s TRX token unlock, calls for a bigger dump are getting louder. Simply put, the upcoming 33 billion TRX release threatens to throw a spanner in the works by adding to the selling pressure.
What will the colossal unlock exactly bring for TRX investors?
Tron Foundation To Release 33 Billion TRX On January 1, 2020
The strategy of locking coins helps protect them against evil players, thus ensuring a constant supply of tokens. In 2018, Tron Foundation celebrated independence after successfully migrating from the Ethereum network with a 1 billion TRX burn.
Initially, Tron’s supply was 100 billion with around 66 billion TRX tokens in circulation. After the burn, Tron Foundation locked away a little over 33 billion TRX in 1000 TRON mainnet addresses. These funds are set to be released tomorrow (1 January 2020) and some traders are anticipating a plunge as the unlock will potentially flood the market with TRX coins. Basically, the unlock will increase TRX’s circulating supply by a whopping 50 percent.
It’s still unclear how these funds will be utilized, but there are speculations about more public acquisitions in a bid to grow the Tron ecosystem. Just last month, Tron CEO Justin Sun purchased a stake in crypto exchange Poloniex.
More recently, Justin Sun took to Twitter to share the news about the acquisition of a blockchain-based content sharing platform, DLive, which will be beneficial for both TRX and BitTorrent ecosystems. Notably, DLive becomes the third major Tron acquisition, following Poloniex and BitTorrent (acquired in June 2018). Therefore, there is still a chance that Tron Foundation might use the soon-to-be-released funds for other high profile purchases.
Meanwhile, it can be said that TRX might close New Year’s Eve in the red as investors are getting jittery about a potential dump owing to the massive TRX unlock today. And with no particular plan disclosed yet, we will have to wait and see what Tron Foundation will do with the 33 billion TRX tokens.
