Recently, there has been a lot of discussion about ASTER, with all kinds of rumors flying around—Shandong capital, big investors getting trapped, it’s quite lively. Let’s not bother with these true or false gossip for now; from the project itself, there are actually some solid points.

The platform has indeed put in effort. Users can earn points through trading and participate in airdrop activities, making the user experience much better compared to a bunch of trash coin projects. But this has led to a magical phenomenon—despite the good product, the token price remains suppressed by an invisible hand, repeatedly stuck between 0.9 and 1.2, unable to break through. The project team isn’t sitting idle either; they’ve been serious about buybacks, but it still can’t change the situation.

The core issues are actually twofold: First, the total circulating supply is 8 billion tokens, which is an enormous market cap. In the face of such a scale, buybacks are just a drop in the bucket. Think about it—how much capital would be needed to lift such a massive market? Second, the unlock schedule keeps changing, like a ticking time bomb. Market participants all know there are huge amounts of tokens waiting to be unlocked, who dares to hold long-term? Once there’s a rebound, they quickly sell off, creating continuous selling pressure.

This forms a strange cycle: even if there’s capital actively buying at the low range of 0.9 to 1.2, and even if the project team is desperately doing buybacks, the price is still tightly held down by negative expectations—because everyone knows the upcoming unlock wave, and rushing in early to push the price up is just asking for trouble.

Following this logic, if the core issues of unlock transparency and circulation pressure are not addressed, the price is likely to seek a lower equilibrium point. Around $0.6 might be where most people can comfortably reassess the project’s value.

One final piece of advice: a well-run platform doesn’t necessarily mean the token will rise. These are two different things. Especially for projects with unclear unlock information and obvious sell pressure, you must wait until market sentiment is fully released before bottom-fishing—don’t rush to take the last baton.