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Kinetiq charges its points farmers $0.26 a token for 50 million unlocked KNTQ
Kinetiq is ending its kPoints program by letting holders buy 50 million unlocked KNTQ at $0.26, up to 18% of circulating supply. Every claimer who sells at once pockets the gap to market, so the size of the claim decides how hard KNTQ is pulled toward $0.26 before the window closes.
The Investor · Invest desk
Drafted by a language model from the sources cited here and checked against its claim ledger before publication. How we use AISend a correction
What happened
- KNTQ set an all-time high of about $0.448 on October 1, 2026, the day the 10-day claim window opened, and has since slipped to around $0.33.
- Kinetiq distributed 36.8 million kPoints over 46 weeks, with later phases paying out 800,000 points a week.
- If every right is exercised, the sale of 5% of KNTQ's 1 billion maximum supply raises $13 million in gross proceeds.
- Tokens left unclaimed when the window shuts return to the Kinetiq Foundation, which plans to put them toward ecosystem development.
- A governance proposal, KIP-5, would send revenue-funded KNTQ buybacks to the Hyperliquid Assistance Fund with the aim of permanently reducing supply.
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Why it matters
- cost At $0.33, the spread on a full claim works out to about 9.5 cents per kPoint earned, and farmers have to put up cash at $0.26 a token to collect any of it.
- constraint The right is worthless below $0.26, a further fall of about 21% from $0.33, and the 10-day limit means holders cannot wait out the slide before deciding.
- decision Kinetiq chose a funding event over a giveaway, and Crypto Briefing notes that some farmers may have expected their points to convert into free tokens.
Kinetiq has in effect written its points holders a ten-day call option struck at $0.26 [1][5]. When the company published its blog post, KNTQ traded around $0.40 [9], so the claim price sat 35% under market [1]. At $0.33 the spread on the full 50 million tokens is about $3.5 million, half the roughly $7 million it was worth at announcement [3]. Crypto Briefing describes the slide as more than 20%. From $0.448 to $0.33 it is about 26% [2][9].
Supply is the part existing holders have to price. Circulating KNTQ runs between 280 million and 335 million tokens [10], so a full claim adds roughly 15% to 18% to the float [5], and buyers can use the tokens immediately, without lockup or vesting [7]. A farmer with no view on KNTQ can pay $0.26, sell at market and keep the difference. That trade shrinks as the price falls and disappears at $0.26, because below that price nobody would claim. I'd expect claim-and-sell flow to pull KNTQ toward $0.26 during the window and to weaken as it gets there.
The counter-case comes from the structure itself. Crypto Briefing argues the paid claim filters for users willing to commit capital and turns the distribution into a funding event for the project [15]. A buyer who paid $0.26 in cash has a cost basis to defend; an airdrop recipient starts at zero. If enough claimers hold, the new supply sits in wallets that chose to buy it. The third case is thin participation, where the selling question passes to the foundation [8], and Crypto Briefing's report does not say when the foundation would deploy those tokens.
Kinetiq's answer to new supply is buybacks, on the model of Hyperliquid's Assistance Fund, which buys HYPE with exchange revenue [13]. Earlier revenue-funded purchases took in more than 5.39 million KNTQ at an average of $0.15 [12], or about $810,000 of spending [7]. Absorbing all 50 million claim tokens at $0.33 would cost $16.5 million [4], about 20 times that [8]. The revenue comes from a Hyperliquid liquid staking business [3] that turns staked HYPE into kHYPE and has added perpetual futures through Markets.xyz [14].
The overhang case fails if claim wallets hold through the window and KNTQ stays above $0.26 after it closes. In that version the 50 million tokens went to buyers who paid for them, and Kinetiq raised cash against supply it could have handed out for nothing [6].
What to watch
- How much of the 50 million KNTQ is claimed by the time the 10-day window that opened October 1 closes.
- On-chain selling from claim wallets, and whether KNTQ trades down to the $0.26 claim price.
- The outcome of KIP-5 and the size of the first buybacks routed to the Hyperliquid Assistance Fund.