Price the round at a fully diluted valuation the market can hold after launch, not the highest one an investor will sign. Of 118 tokens launched in 2025 and tracked by Memento Research, 84.7% were trading below their launch price, as Briefs reported in July 2026. Those that opened between $500 million and $940 million in FDV fell a median 82%, and only 3% stayed above launch.
Who decides this
The CFO proposes the valuation and the board approves it. The CFO is accountable for how each round’s price links to the next, to the launch price and to what insiders can sell and when. The board is accountable for the trade-off: more capital now at a high FDV, against a token that may trade below every investor’s entry. The board owns the outcome when the chart goes the wrong way.
What does FDV measure, and what does it hide?
FDV prices every token that will ever exist at today’s price; market capitalisation prices only the tokens in circulation. When most of the supply is locked, the two numbers can sit far apart. A token can look modestly valued on circulating supply while its fully diluted valuation is already high.
That gap is where most of the risk sits. Binance Research, as Cointelegraph reported in May 2024, estimated about $155 billion of tokens would unlock between 2024 and 2030. It described launches with low circulating supply as increasingly common. Every one of those locked tokens is priced into FDV today and reaches the market later.
Our view: the board should look at both numbers, and at the unlock calendar that joins them. FDV is a statement about the future supply. Market cap is a statement about today’s float. Neither alone tells you what price the token can hold.
How is the round priced against FDV?
Each private round sets an implied FDV: the price per token investors pay, times the total supply. In an equity round with token rights, the link is often a ratio. Magna’s token warrant guide gives an example: $1 million invested at a $10 million equity valuation, with a 2:1 ratio, implies a $20 million fully diluted token valuation.
Magna calls the ratio method a common compromise when the token is expected to be worth more than the company. That is the first trade-off. A higher ratio gives investors fewer tokens per dollar, which protects supply, but it also sets a higher starting FDV that later rounds must clear.
Two other valuations sit beside the headline. A third-party valuation firm sets fair market value for tax and accounting. Magna notes that firm discounts for lack of marketability, liquidity and transfer restrictions, so fair market value runs below the headline figure. Tally described the same process for its own token rights: an independent firm set the valuation that determined what investors paid for their allocations. The CFO should keep all three numbers separate and explain each to the board.
Our view: ask for one table covering every round. It should show price per token, implied FDV, unlock start and cliff length. If cheaper tokens unlock before dearer ones, expect the cheapest holders to set the early price.
The sequence matters as much as any one price. If the strategic round sets a high FDV, the private and public rounds must price above it or accept a visible down round. How to order those rounds is covered in our fundraising rounds guide, linked below.
What launch FDV can the market absorb?
Lower launch FDVs held up far better in 2025. Memento Research’s review of 2025 token launches, as reported by Briefs, grouped 118 launches by starting FDV. The pattern was consistent: the higher the opening valuation, the worse the outcome.
| Starting FDV at launch | Median price change from launch | Share still above launch price |
|---|---|---|
| $25 million to $200 million | Down 26% | 40% |
| $500 million to $940 million | Down about 82% | 3% |
| All 118 launches | 84.7% below launch; losers down a median 76.8% | 18 of 118 at or above launch |
Binance flagged a related pattern earlier. In May 2024, Binance invited small and mid-sized projects to apply to its listing programmes, days after its research arm published the unlock estimate above.
Treat this as a warning, not a formula. It is one year, one sample, and one research firm’s grouping. Some launches did very well; Yellow’s December 2025 report on the same dataset listed tokens whose FDV rose several hundred per cent. But a board that approves a launch FDV in the top bucket should know the odds it is taking.
What we would do: set the launch FDV from the bottom up. Start with the float you can support, the liquidity you have contracted and the unlocks due in the first year. Then ask what FDV those numbers can carry. If the answer is below the last private round, you have a pricing problem to solve before launch, not after.
How do unlocks change the price investors actually paid?
Unlocks turn FDV from a number on paper into supply on the market, and the market prices them early. Keyrock studied more than 16,000 unlock events across 40 tokens. About 90% created negative price pressure, whatever their size or type.
Timing matters. Keyrock found price impact often started about 30 days before an unlock and steadied within about 14 days after it. Larger unlocks produced drops about 2.4 times sharper. Team unlocks did the most damage. Ecosystem-development unlocks were among the few categories with a positive average effect, about 1.18%. Investor unlocks, across 106 events, showed controlled and minimal declines, and volatility from large unlocks mostly faded within 14 days.
For the CFO, this changes what “price” means in a round. An investor buying at a given FDV is also buying a place in the unlock calendar. Investors will price that in, and so will the market. Detailed allocation and vesting benchmarks are in our token economics benchmarks guide, linked below.
Who provides liquidity at launch, and on what terms?
Liquidity at launch is contracted, not assumed, and its terms affect the price the token can hold. One such structure is the loan-and-call-option model. Tokenomist describes it as the issuer lending tokens to a market maker, who is paid in call options rather than cash.
The model costs no cash, which suits a thin treasury. The trade-off is incentives. Tokenomist notes the firm’s largest return comes from the option, which gains with price and volatility, not from quote quality. It recommends a ladder of strikes, option coverage well below the full loan, a term matched to the real liquidity need, and a set plan for returning unexercised tokens.
Because pay is not tied to quote quality, Tokenomist argues that measurable spread, depth and uptime obligations matter more. Its examples use a 24-month loan term. A term that outlasts the real liquidity need leaves the issuer carrying option exposure after the service has stopped being the reason for the deal.
That last point links back to FDV. A single large return of loaned tokens, with quotes pulled at the same moment, can open a gap in a thin market. The CFO should model that date alongside the unlock calendar.
What goes wrong: a launch plan that assumed liquidity
The usual failure starts with a round priced at a high FDV and a launch plan that takes depth for granted. The deck shows a listing date and a target price. It does not show who quotes the book, how deep it is, or what happens when the first cliff unlocks thirty days later.
Then launch day comes. Float is small, so the opening price holds for a while. The market maker’s contract has no measurable depth or uptime obligation. As the first investor and team unlocks approach, the price slides early, as Keyrock’s data suggests it will. The token ends up below the private round price, and every later raise starts from that number.
The fix belongs in the pricing decision, not the launch week. Approve a round FDV only alongside a liquidity plan with contracted terms and an unlock calendar the CFO has modelled against it.
How Alcyone approaches it
Alcyone starts from what the token has to hold on launch day and works back to the round price. That means sizing float, unlock schedules and contracted liquidity together, then checking each round’s FDV against them. This work sits inside Alcyone’s fundraising and tokenomics advisory, and its business development and partnerships work includes review of market-making contracts. Its partners built and operate the TrustSwap Launchpad, through which 80+ projects have launched.