SUI From Binance Listing to Now: Price, Unlocks, and TVL

The tape on SUI is easy to misread. From the 6 January 2025 high of $5.3687 on Binance SUIUSDT daily data, the token closed 18 August 2026 at $0.6517 — about 88% below that peak. That sounds like a failed layer-1. It is not the listing-to-now story. Binance opened spot on 3 May 2023; the first reliable daily close in our series is $1.4016. From that print, spot is down about 53%. Ugly. Not the same as an 88% wipeout from a later blow-off. The $0.10 figure that still shows up as the 2023 “open” is the sale / Launchpool reference, not a Binance fill. Use it and 2023 becomes a fake +675% year.

This is not a buy or a sell. It is a map of price, circulating supply, and DeFi TVL from the listing through the current print. If you trade the name, put alerts on the crypto monitor and run a −50% / −88% case through the spot profit calculator before you treat any level as cheap. Education, not a signal.

What actually listed

Sui mainnet went live on 3 May 2023 around 12:00 UTC. Binance listed SUI the same day at 12:15 UTC after a two-day Launchpool (1–2 May) — the exchange’s 33rd Launchpool project. Initial pairs included SUI/USDT, SUI/BTC, SUI/BNB, and a fee-waived SUI/TUSD book. Mysten Labs (Move / Diem alumni) brought a 10 billion hard cap and a tiny float onto a major CEX on day one.

Circulating supply at launch was about 528 million SUI — 5.28% of the cap. Our first two daily rows (2–3 May) share the same OHLC: open $0.10, high $2.00, close $1.4016, with more than $600 million of USDT notional on that bar. Treat $2.00 as the listing-day high and $1.40 as the first close. The $0.10 open is the IEO / community-sale reference (about $0.03–$0.10 depending on venue), not the first Binance match.

The path on Binance spot

Tradervilla stores daily OHLC and USDT volume for Binance USDT pairs. For SUIUSDT the continuous series runs 2 May 2023 through 18 August 2026 (1,204 daily bars). Calendar figures below use each year’s first daily open and last daily close. 2026 is year-to-date, not a finished year.

2023 (partial, 244 days). First close $1.4016; year-end close $0.7752. From that first close the year was −44.7%, not +675%. Post-listing low: $0.362 on 19 October 2023 — the real all-time low once you drop the $0.10 seed. High on the listing bar: $2.00. USDT notional for the stub year: about $9.77 billion. Launch, dump, grind. Classic small-float listing after a sale.

2024. Open $0.7753; close $4.1225; +431.7%. Intra-year low $0.4625, high $4.96. Volume jumped to about $49.8 billion. Ecosystem names (Cetus, NAVI, later Suilend) and native USDC showed up in the tape after a year of being left for dead. Do not extrapolate a +432% move off a sub-dollar base into the next twelve months.

2025. Open $4.1226; high $5.3687 on 6 January; close $1.4043; −65.9% calendar. Intra-year low $0.5597. Volume was the largest in the series: about $69.1 billion. The all-time high landed in the first week of January — not at year-end, not with TVL. Calendar return hides amplitude: a new high, then a long give-back. Same pattern, different asset: Bitcoin year by year.

2026 YTD (229 days through 18 August). Open $1.4044; high $2.0244; low $0.6354; last close $0.6517; −53.6% from the year open. Volume about $9.67 billion — pacing well below 2025, though the year is incomplete. From the first listing close ($1.40) you are still down ~53.5%. From the October 2023 low ($0.362) you are up ~80%. Both statements are true. Pick the anchor that matches your holding period, not the one that fits the tweet.

Unlocks did more than the chart admits

Max supply is 10 billion and is not an inflation coin in the ETH / SOL sense — there is a hard cap. The float is the problem. Circulating supply in our coin record is about 4.03 billion, roughly 40% of the cap. That is a jump from 5.28% at listing. The gap between market cap and fully diluted value is still the structural headwind: at ~$0.65–$0.72, you are paying for ~4 billion coins in the float and looking at another ~6 billion scheduled through the late 2020s.

The locked stack is not one cliff. Community reserve is about 50% of total supply; early contributors ~20%; investors ~14%; Mysten treasury ~10%; Community Access Programme ~6%. Investor books used 12-month cliffs then linear vest; stake subsidies drip over years. Monthly unlocks in 2026 have run ~40–64 million SUI (roughly 1–1.7% of the current float), tilting toward community-reserve buckets after the heavier investor / contributor phase. Tokenomist’s next dated event as of this writing is 1 September 2026, community reserve — not a prediction that the print dumps that day, a reminder that every rally has to absorb scheduled supply.

A chain can add users while the token still leaks. Demand has to clear the unlock plus any staked-to-liquid rotation. Staking reduces immediately tradable float; it does not cancel the vesting calendar.

TVL followed a different clock than price

DeFiLlama’s Sui chain TVL starts near $33 million in early May 2023. It did not peak with the token. SUI’s all-time high was 6 January 2025; chain TVL’s high in that series is about $2.64 billion on 9 October 2025 — nine months later. By 31 March 2026 it was about $568 million; as of 19 August 2026, about $413 million. Price made the high first. TVL made a higher high into Q4 2025, then both legs retraced. That lag is why “TVL is at an all-time high” was a weak buy-the-token argument in October 2025: the float had already peaked.

Use TVL the way DeFi desks actually use it — as a flow and failure-mode check, not as a price target. For that framework, see what DeFi analysts watch. Pair it with live levels on compare coins rather than a single TVL screenshot.

Failure modes on this tape

Anchoring on $0.10. That print is sale economics. Listing-to-now from the first Binance close is the honest basis for anyone who could actually buy on the venue.

Anchoring only on ATH. An 88% drawdown from $5.37 is real pain for the 2024–early-2025 bid. It is not the return of a Launchpool farmer who sold day one, and it is not the return of someone who bought the October 2023 low.

Treating 2024’s +432% as a base rate. That year started at $0.78 with a still-small float. The 2026 open was $1.40 with ~4 billion coins out. Same ticker, different supply machine.

Reading peak TVL as token demand. TVL can be incentive residual, looping, and own-token deposits. It peaked after price. It then lost more than 80% from that high while the token was already in a deep cut. Correlation, not confirmation.

Sizing perps on an unlocking L1 the way you size BTC. Funding and OI on SUI have a history of violent de-leveraging. The spot series already shows three distinct drawdown regimes (listing dump, 2023 ATL, 2025–2026 unwind). Add leverage and the same path liquidates you on the way to a level you “knew” was coming.

What would change this read

A sustained reclaim of the 2026 year-to-date high near $2.02 on rising Binance spot volume would argue the August print is a range, not a new leg down. A daily close back through the October 2023 low at $0.362 would force a re-label: not “deep cut from $5,” but a break of the entire post-listing structure. TVL reclaiming $1 billion with fees and stablecoin supply — not just SUI-denominated deposits — would be the on-chain tell that demand is catching the unlock. None of those are targets. They are checkpoints against the map above. For the current session next to that map, use the daily market summary.

FAQ

When did Binance list SUI?

3 May 2023 at 12:15 UTC, same day as mainnet, after a 1–2 May Launchpool. Our SUIUSDT daily series begins 2 May 2023; the first two bars share OHLC and should be read as one listing window, not two independent sessions.

Is SUI up or down from the listing?

From the first daily close ($1.4016) to 18 August 2026 ($0.6517): about −53.5%. From the listing-day high ($2.00): about −67%. From the later all-time high ($5.3687): about −88%. From the 19 October 2023 low ($0.362): about +80%. State the basis or the sentence is marketing.

Why does circulating supply matter more than the 10 billion cap?

The cap is fixed. The float is not. Going from ~5% circulating to ~40% means several times more coins can hit books than at listing, even if “max supply” never changed. Monthly unlocks in the tens of millions of SUI are the ongoing bid that new demand has to lift. Vesting still runs toward 2030.

Did TVL confirm the $5 high?

No. Token ATH was January 2025. Chain TVL in the DeFiLlama series peaked near $2.64 billion in October 2025, then fell to about $413 million by 19 August 2026. TVL lagged price up and then collapsed with beta. It is a useful flow check, not a timing tool.

Can this history tell me when to buy SUI?

No. It tells you which anchor you are using, how much supply has already unlocked, and which on-chain print failed to save the token last cycle. Size against what you can afford to lose. Validate live levels on the monitor; do not average a 2024 return into a 2026 book.

This article is education, not financial advice. Cryptocurrency prices, unlock schedules, volumes, and TVL figures change continuously; verify live data before making decisions. Never risk capital you cannot afford to lose.