“HYPE is about to face its first true test,” warned Lukas Ruppert in research published for Maelstrom Fund, the family office fund run by BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes.

The Maelstrom analyst flagged the 237.8 million HYPE tokens that will begin vesting linearly over 24 months starting Nov. 29. Assuming a price of $50 per token, that equates to $11.9 billion in team unlocks, or $500 million hitting the market each month.

“The problem? Buybacks at current levels can only absorb ~17%. That leaves a $410M/month supply overhang,” said Ruppert.

The latest piece of research comes less than a month after Hayes said he believed HYPE could “126x from the current levels.” At the time, HYPE was trading in a range similar to its current price.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

On Monday, onchain wallet tracker Lookonchain flagged that Hayes had sold his entire $5.1 million stash of HYPE for a 20% gain.

Hayes alluded to the upcoming token unlock as the reason for the sale, saying “don’t worry 126x is still possible 2028 is a long way off.”

“Of course you were careful to post about the 126X (nonsensical) hyper bullish « analysis » before mentioning any of those concerns,” wrote X user @eldarcap.

“So that you could conveniently sell into the last leg of your popped up exit liquidity.”