Why the paper describes demand and never the sell pressure

A researcher analysed fifty token whitepapers and found that forty-seven modelled demand drivers (use cases, staking, governance) while only nine modelled sell pressure (unlocks, emission, team liquidation). The omission was not accidental. Demand-only models produce hockey-stick projections; balanced models produce modest ones. The narrative economy selects for optimism.

What everyone sees

Readers absorb the demand thesis: “If X million users each need Y tokens, the price will…” The projection feels logical because it chains assumptions that all point upward. The reader does not notice that nobody asked “Who is selling, when, and how much?” because the paper deliberately did not raise the question.

What is actually happening

Sockin and Xiong modelled token markets as two-sided: a demand side (utility) and a supply side (emission, unlocks, miner selling). Ignoring the supply side makes any demand model unbounded — prices can only go up in a world with no sellers. The whitepaper exploits this by constructing a one-sided model that looks analytical but is structurally incomplete. It is not lying; it is omitting the half of the equation that produces lower numbers.

Why it stays hidden

The hidden mechanism is selective modelling as narrative control. The whitepaper is not an analysis — it is an argument. By modelling only demand, it constructs a world where appreciation is the only outcome. The reader who accepts the model accepts the conclusion, never realising that the inputs were curated to produce it.