StakeStone (STO) Price Surges Over 500% In One Week, What’s Driving This Altcoin?

The StakeStone (STO) price has surged by over 500% in the past week, drawing attention to the token’s ecosystem. The altcoin’s rally comes ahead of a significant token unlock, which could put selling pressure on the token and drive its price down. 

Why The StakeStone (STO) Price Is Surging

The StakeStone (STO) price has surged by over 500% in the last week amid bullish fundamentals in its ecosystem, as noted by market analyst Neel. One of these developments includes StakeStone’s launch of version 2.0 of its protocol earlier this year. The staking protocol version enables gasless transactions, social login, and AI-powered yield optimization across 20 blockchains. 

Neel further mentioned that the StakeStone (STO) price has surged because of the protocol’s partnership with Trump’s World Liberty to provide cross-chain liquidity infrastructure for the USD1 stablecoin. This represents a huge positive for the token’s ecosystem as USD1 has a circulating supply of $4.3 billion. StakeStone will act as a liquidity rail that moves the stablecoin across different networks. 

Neel pointed out that another reason why the StakeStone (STO) price is surging is that the liquid staking and yield narrative is gaining momentum again this year. As such, smart money is rotating into this sector and investing in altcoins like STO. On-chain analytics platform Lookonchain drew attention to a fresh wallet that withdrew 25.5 million STO, 11.32% of the circulating supply, from Binance earlier this week. 

Activity in the futures market is also driving the StakeStone (STO) price surge. CoinGlass data show that top traders on Binance are currently bullish on StakeStone, with the traders’ long/short ratio above 1. The altcoin’s derivative volume has surged by over 500% to $3.44 billion, while open interest has climbed by almost 300% to $332 million. 

Price At Risk Of A Decline With Upcoming Unlock

The StakeStone (STO) price is at risk of significant selling pressure due to an upcoming token unlock. Cryptorank data shows that 20.17 million STO tokens, 2.02% of the total supply, will be unlocked tomorrow. At current prices, these tokens are worth $18.22 million and represent 8.95% of the altcoin’s market cap. Meanwhile, it is worth noting that almost 70% of the token’s supply is yet to be unlocked. 

Most of the tokens that will be unlocked tomorrow will go to investors, while the Foundation and Team also have some allocation from tomorrow’s unlock. Crypto analyst Anti-Moon opined that the team and investors were likely pushing the StakeStone (STO) price up since they will want to sell the altcoin at higher prices. 

At the time of writing, the StakeStone price is trading at around $0.8465, up over 285% in the last 24 hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap.