According to data shared by STIX founder Taran Sabharwal, investors who hold locked tokens have faced huge losses over the past year.
Between May 2024 and April 2025, the average decline from the valuation of the Commercial (OTC) to the current spot price recorded was approximately 50%.
Locked tokens are suffering from declining markets
Sabharwal’s analysis highlighted that many investors missed the opportunity to withdraw in 2024 at double the today’s price. Unpublished token trading is often done early with long-term expectations, but over the past year, market changes and project-specific issues have led to major losses.
Almost every tracking project has significantly reduced value. Scroll (SCR) and BLAST (BLAST) suffered the worst hits, dropping by 85% and 88%, respectively. Following Eigenlayer (Eigen), there was a 75% drop. Other projects such as -64% ZKSYNC (ZK), -50% wormhole (W), -48% IO.NET (IO) also dropped sharply. Jito is the only project to post profits, rising 75% over the same time.
Overall, these early stage token investors who committed to locked positions faced greater losses than the typical crypto market. Artemis data shows that the broad market fell by an average of 40.7% over the same period, about 20% less than the average loss of locked tokens.
Investors face more losses
Furthermore, when taking liquidity values into account in the last 12 months, such holders lost an additional 31% at opportunity cost when compared to Bitcoin (BTC), which earned 45% over the same period. On top of that, with over $40 billion of locked altcoins scheduled to be released soon, sellers are facing an additional 50% discount when they leave the OTC market.
Based on this data, a dollar invested a year ago is worth $1.45 in BTC. Meanwhile, the same $1 held in unreleased coins is currently worth $0.50. Plus, the current OTC discount will sell for just $0.25. This results in a total loss of about 82.8% compared to BTC and 75% compared to USD.
Analysts also note that in 2025 most cryptocurrencies reach the end of the cliff period, so the discount is slightly lower because the best period is short.
Locked tokens usually have a limit to be delayed when they are best schedules or available for sale. This exposes holders to price changes during the lockup period.
