The YZY unlock on August 16 keeps getting described as a manageable event. Several trackers put it at roughly 22.8% of circulating supply, a line that has traveled from one unlock digest to the next without anyone re-deriving it. The number is wrong, or at least mislabeled. Against the supply that actually trades, the release is closer to 40%.
Here are the figures underneath. Ye's token releases about 120.83 million YZY next Sunday, worth near $35 million at a price around $0.29. Every one of those tokens goes to Yeezy Investments LLC, the entity tied to Kanye West that already controls most of the supply.
Where the 22.8% figure comes from, and why it misleads
Unlock trackers measure the cliff against released supply, a schedule figure near 529 million tokens. Divide 120.83 million by that and you land on 22.83%. Market sites tell a different story. CoinGecko and Tokenomist both peg circulating supply at 298.96 million, barely 30% of the one billion cap. Set the same YZY unlock against the tokens that genuinely change hands, and its share climbs to about 40%.
Repeated numbers rarely get re-checked. The Hyperliquid buyback carried the same kind of gap, promising 99% of fees and paying out 61%. The distance between 529 million released and 299 million circulating is its own tell here: more than 200 million vested tokens never reached the market. They sit with the founding entity, off the order book, which is where this new tranche is going too.
| Denominator | Supply | Unlock as share |
|---|---|---|
| Released supply (unlock trackers) | 529.17M | 22.83% |
| Circulating supply (market trackers) | 298.96M | 40.4% |
| Total supply | 1,000M | 12.08% |
A $35 million release into $113,000 a day
Pick whichever denominator you prefer. The figure that decides what happens next sits somewhere else. YZY changed hands for about $113,000 over the last 24 hours. At that pace, clearing $35 million of tokens would take close to a year of total market volume, and that assumes every other seller stepped aside.
This is the shape of MANTA's near-dead chain sitting under its own unlock, or the pump.fun cliff that dropped $86 million on insiders. The dilution question is real, yet secondary. What matters is intent.
Because the tokens land with one holder instead of thousands of retail wallets, the float of YZY does not expand on its own. Yeezy Investments can keep them, the way it kept the earlier tranches that padded the released figure. It can also sell, into a book that clears six figures on a strong day.
The launch set the pattern
YZY opened near $2.95 on August 20 last year. It unwound within hours. More than fifty thousand wallets booked losses in those first days, while eleven insiders cleared seven figures each. The token now trades about 90% under that peak, a market cap near $88 million against a fully diluted value close to $293 million.
Whether Sunday's tranche moves YZY comes down to one decision inside a single LLC, and the released-versus-circulating gap suggests the earlier cliffs mostly stayed parked. The number worth tracking is the outflow from the Yeezy Investments wallet after August 16, not the percentage printed in the headline.
