HBAR

Hedera

Layer 1

An enterprise-governed ledger with big-name council members, but tiny fees and a treasury still releasing supply.

Big names, small usage v1.1 · as of 2026-10-20 · framework v1.13 Coinsight · all analyses
Bottom line

Hedera has the strongest corporate governance roster in crypto (Google, IBM, Dell, Boeing, and Accenture since April 2026) and a spot ETF holding ~786M HBAR. Paid usage has not followed: network fees run at roughly $1,354 a day, while about 1.6B HBAR entered circulation over the last ~13 months. The token is −52% over a year and −68% from its November 2025 high; the IBM-linked spike in late September faded within three weeks. Until fees or ETF demand grow enough to absorb treasury releases, HBAR is a governance and brand story more than a cash-flow one.

Scorecard (1–5)
Project
Token performance
Tokenomics
Price
$0.0843
+1.8% 24h · −2% 30d · CoinGecko 20 Oct
Market cap
$3.71B
rank #32 · FDV $4.21B
24h volume
$101.7M
2.7% of market cap
From ATH
−85%
ATH $0.5692, Sep 2021
2026 YTD
−21%
$0.1064 → $0.0843
In Canary ETF
~786M HBAR
≈ $82M net assets, 29–30 Sep

The last 12 months

$0.05$0.1$0.15$0.2$0.25Oct 25NovDecJan 26FebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNov2025-11-01: $0.2012$0.201 peak2026-01-06: $0.1321$0.1322026-08-17: $0.0646$0.065 low2026-09-29: $0.122$0.1222026-10-20: $0.0843$0.0841Canary HBAR ETF lists2Accenture joins the Council34.07B release forecast4Year low at $0.0655WISeKey joins as partner6IDTrust on IBM Cloud7Spike to $0.1228Stock tokens via HashPack9Block Streams cutover10Agent Accounts testnet
MarketGovernanceTokenomicsAdoptionUpcoming

Daily closes from CoinGecko, 21 Oct 2025 to 20 Oct 2026. Intraday highs during the late-September spike were higher than the closes shown.

Key events
  1. 1
    28 Oct 25 Canary HBAR ETF lists. First US spot HBAR ETF (HBR) starts trading on Nasdaq; HBAR peaks at $0.201 four days later.
  2. 2
    30 Apr 26 Accenture joins the Council. Runs a consensus node with an equal vote; focus on trusted infrastructure for enterprise AI.
  3. 3
    23 Jul 26 4.07B release forecast. Q3 treasury forecast worth ~$268M, a line that has rolled forward for three quarters; fees reported at ~$1,354/day.
  4. 4
    17 Aug 26 Year low at $0.065. Slide from $0.092 (2 Jun) bottoms on 17 Aug, then rebounds to ~$0.08 within a week.
  5. 5
    04 Sep 26 WISeKey joins as partner. Council adds WISeKey as strategic partner and SpaceDev as community partner.
  6. 6
    23 Sep 26 IDTrust on IBM Cloud. The Hashgraph Group's identity platform listed in the IBM Cloud Catalog.
  7. 7
    29 Sep 26 Spike to $0.122. +65% from the 17 Sep close on the IBM news; back to $0.084 by 20 Oct.
  8. 8
    Soon Stock tokens via HashPack. HashPack and SODAX announced Robinhood stock tokens for Hedera users; no go-live date published.
  9. 9
    Nov 26 Block Streams cutover. Mainnet switches from the record stream to Block Streams (HIP-1193); mirror nodes must upgrade first.
  10. 10
    Q4 26 Agent Accounts testnet. Partner testnet for AI-agent spending accounts; public testnet Q1 2027, mainnet Q2 2027.

How a Consensus Service message flows through Hedera

Enterprise app
Submits a message

E.g. a supply-chain or audit event sent to a Consensus Service topic.

Fee
Pays a USD-fixed fee

Fractions of a cent, set in dollars and paid in HBAR at the network exchange rate.

Council node
Receives and gossips

A node run by a Council member (e.g. Google, IBM) shares it with the others.

Hashgraph
Consensus in seconds

Virtual voting fixes the order and a consensus timestamp; stake weights each node.

Block / mirror nodes
Record published

The result goes to the block stream; mirror nodes serve it through public APIs.

Auditor
Verifies the log

Anyone can check order and timestamp without trusting the enterprise.

Where HBAR comes in: it pays the fee, which is fixed in USD, so more HBAR is needed only as usage grows, not as price rises. Staked HBAR (no lock-up) weights consensus and earns up to 2.5% a year from a treasury-funded reward account. Nothing is burned, and stablecoin or tokenized-asset value moving over Hedera does not need to be held in HBAR.

Usage and adoption

USD per year, last ~12 months
Network fees
~$0.5M
Bought by Canary ETF
~$80M
New circulating supply
~$160M

Fees: ~$1,354/day in Jul 2026 (Coin Edition), about $0.5M a year; Messari had ~$216k a quarter in Q3 2025. New supply: circulating rose ~1.6B HBAR from Q3 2025 (Messari, 42.4B) to 20 Oct 2026 (CoinGecko, 44.0B), valued at the 12-month average close of ~$0.10. ETF: ~786M HBAR held by Canary HBR (net assets ~$82M on 29 Sep), accumulated since its 28 Oct 2025 launch. All approximate.

  • strong signal
    Network fees
    ~$1,354 / day

    Jul 2026, single secondary source. Fees are fixed in USD and tiny by design, so they say little about token demand.

  • strong signal
    ETF holdings
    ~786M HBAR

    Canary HBR, 30 Sep 2026, ~$82M. Direct, measurable HBAR demand; Grayscale's filing has no launch reported.

  • medium signal
    Treasury forecast
    4.07B HBAR

    Q3 2026 forecast release; actual movements have been much smaller (~186M in Q2).

  • weak signal
    Accounts
    10M+

    Sep 2026, per Hedera's X account via secondary coverage. Counts accounts created, not active users.

Hedera's enterprise names are real, but the network collects only about half a million dollars of fees a year. The ETF has absorbed roughly half of the new circulating supply; treasury releases, not usage, still set the supply balance.

Project

What it is
A public proof-of-stake ledger (mainnet since 2019) built on the hashgraph consensus algorithm: finality in seconds and fees fixed in US dollars. Core services are the Consensus Service (timestamped message logs), the Token Service (native tokens) and EVM smart contracts.
Team and governance
Co-founded by Leemon Baird (inventor of hashgraph) and Mance Harmon, who chairs the Hedera Council. The Council is a group of large enterprises (Google, IBM, Dell, Boeing; Accenture joined 30 Apr 2026), each running a consensus node with an equal vote. WISeKey and SpaceDev joined as partners in Sep 2026.
Technology
The full codebase was donated to the Linux Foundation as Hiero (Apache 2.0) in Sep 2024; Hedera mainnet now runs as an instance of Hiero. Block Streams (HIP-1056) and Block Nodes (HIP-1081) are the main 2026 upgrades.
Traction
Strong in tokenization and audit use cases on paper: a FATF report and a UK Treasury-backed report cited Hedera in Jul 2026, and The Hashgraph Group's IDTrust was listed on the IBM Cloud Catalog on 23 Sep 2026. Paid usage is small: network fees ran at ~$1,354/day in Jul 2026.
Competitors
Ethereum and its L2s for tokenization, Solana, the XRP Ledger, Stellar, Algorand and permissioned networks such as Canton.
Key risks
USD-fixed fees are tiny by design, so usage barely accrues to HBAR; ~6B HBAR still in the treasury with release forecasts that keep rolling forward; consensus nodes are permissioned; a reported Hitachi Council exit (late Sep 2026) is not confirmed by Hedera.
Roadmap
Block Streams replace the record stream on mainnet in Nov 2026 (HIP-1193; mirror nodes need v0.163.0+). Agent Accounts for AI agents: partner testnet Q4 2026, public testnet Q1 2027, mainnet Q2 2027. Robinhood stock tokens via HashPack and SODAX announced as “soon”. Permissionless nodes are on the roadmap with no date.

Token performance

1-year return (21 Oct 2025 → 20 Oct 2026, CoinGecko)
HBAR
-52%
BTC
-25%
ETH
-38%

HBAR lagged BTC and ETH by a wide margin over 12 months. Over 3 years it is up roughly +70% (from ~$0.05 in Oct 2023, researched by hand and approximate), behind BTC (~+179%) and ahead of ETH (~+53%); 3-year figures are manual because the free CoinGecko API covers 365 days.

Range 2026
$0.065 low (17 Aug) to $0.132 high (6 Jan), daily closes; now $0.084
12-month drawdown
−68%, from $0.201 (1 Nov 2025) to $0.065 (17 Aug 2026)
Liquidity
$102M traded in 24h, 2.7% of market cap; rank #32
Relative strength
−52% in a year vs BTC −25% and ETH −38.5%. The IBM-news spike to $0.122 (29 Sep) gave back −31% by 20 Oct
ATH check ATH check passed. The $0.569 high (15 Sep 2021) came about two years after HBAR began trading in Sep 2019, so it is used as the reference; price is −85% from it.

Tokenomics

Supply
50B HBAR created at genesis, none mined since. ~44.0B circulating (88%); ~6B still held by the treasury.
New supply
No inflation in the usual sense; new float comes from Council treasury releases. Circulating supply rose from ~42.4B (Q3 2025, Messari) to ~44.0B, about +3.8% in ~13 months.
Release schedule
The Treasury Management Report forecasts one quarter ahead. Q3 2026 forecast: 4.07B HBAR (3.88B for ecosystem development, ~$268M), but the same line has rolled forward for three quarters; in Q2 only ~186M of a ~4B forecast moved. “Released” means moved to another party such as the foundation, not sold.
Utility
Pays network fees (fixed in USD, converted to HBAR), account and token creation, and smart-contract gas. Holders proxy-stake to council nodes with no lock-up or slashing; stake weights consensus.
Concentration
The treasury holds ~12% of supply and ecosystem foundations hold much of what has been released. The Canary ETF holds ~786M HBAR (~1.6% of supply).
Sinks
Nothing is burned; fees go to node operators and network accounts. Staking rewards are capped at 2.5% a year, paid from reward account 0.0.800 while it holds at least 250M HBAR; the realised rate falls as more is staked. Main demand sink is the Canary spot ETF.

Bull case

Enterprise and Council projects (Accenture, IBM Cloud listing, tokenized stocks via HashPack) turn into recurring transaction volume, and Agent Accounts make Hedera a default rail for AI-agent payments in 2027. ETF holdings keep growing past ~786M HBAR, treasury releases stay small in practice, and price reclaims the $0.12 to $0.13 zone of January and late September.

Bear case

Fees stay near $0.5M a year, so HBAR remains a passenger on corporate pilots; the rolled-forward 4B HBAR release eventually lands; and price loses $0.08 and retests the $0.065 August low. A confirmed Council departure would dent the governance story.

Watch before the next re-run

  • Quarterly Treasury Management Report: forecast vs actual HBAR released
  • Daily network fees in USD and Consensus Service message volume
  • Canary HBR holdings and whether a second spot ETF (Grayscale) launches
  • Block Streams cutover in Nov 2026 and the Agent Accounts partner testnet

Where to trade

Krakenlisted

HBAR against EUR · USD

24h $2.60M · ±2% depth $960.5k

OKXlisted

HBAR against EUR · USDT · USDC · TRY

24h $2.86M · ±2% depth $1.43M

Largest exchanges

Exchange24h vol±2% depth
BinanceHBAR/USDT$12.1M$1.62M
CoinbaseHBAR/USD$5.84M$1.43M
OKXHBAR/USDT$2.64M$1.43M
GateHBAR/USDT$2.23M$1.41M
KrakenHBAR/USD$2.22M$977.7k

Deepest DEX pools

Pool24h vol±2% depth
Saucerswap V2HBAR/USDC · Hedera$1.73M$173.9k
Saucerswap V1HBAR/USDC · Hedera$21.6k$20.4k
Saucerswap V2HBAR/SAUCE · Hedera$38.4k$12.8k

Pool size (TVL), fee tier and fee APR are not in yet: they need DefiLlama, which this setup cannot reach so far. CL = concentrated liquidity (higher fees, more impermanent-loss risk).

On-chain share of all HBAR volume: 2.0%.

As of 21 Oct 2026 · CoinGecko tickers (24h volume, ±2% depth). ±2% depth is the money it takes to move the price 2% either way: the real size of a market. Exchanges ranked by volume among well-known venues; pools by depth. Not investment advice.

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