A handful of Venture Capitalists (VCs) and insiders swoop in before the public even hears the name of the project. They lock down 90% of the token supply for single-digit cents to maybe a dollar each. Big influencer channels? They get in, too, with the same sweetheart rates.
You, the regular buyer, don’t get that chance. You’re lined up at launch, paying 10 to 100 times more than the price they paid. That spread is pure engineered profit for them.
Then comes the vesting play. Influencer channels often get their tokens locked for a year or more. That’s not to “stabilize the market.” That’s to give them an incentive to shill non-stop to their millions of followers, pushing hype until their unlock hits. Once it does, they cash out. You’re left holding the bag.
This isn’t theory, it’s industry standard. Take Solana’s early days: major VCs, such as Andreessen Horowitz and Alameda Research, bought in at dirt-cheap prices during seed and private rounds. By the time retail investors could touch SOL, the price was already inflated many times over. The insiders didn’t care about long-term community growth; they had an exit plan. When the vesting periods ended, huge amounts of tokens flooded the market. Prices dumped, retail got burned.
That’s the point: supply centralization starts before launch. If most of the supply is held by a tight circle of VCs and influencers, you don’t have decentralization; you have a time bomb.
And don’t let anyone distract you with validator counts or decentralization slogans. “Estimated 50,000 validators” on PulseChain sounds impressive, but it’s meaningless if the stake is concentrated in the same small group. Power isn’t in the number of nodes; it’s in who owns the stake and when they can unload it.
If you’re serious about understanding supply distribution, follow the money before launch, track the vesting schedules, and see who’s actually holding the keys. The blockchain doesn’t lie, but the marketing will.