Kaspa (KAS) surges 20%, eyeing all-time high

KAS, the native token of the proof-of-work cryptocurrency Kaspa, is up 20% as its price approaches a new all-time high.

At the time of writing this article, Kaspa (KAS) has experienced a 200% increase in trading volume and 18% increase in price in the last 24 hours. The cryptocurrency asset is up 25% in the previous seven days and 61% in the last 30 days, indicating an optimistic prognosis for the altcoin this month.

KAS 24-hour price chart | Source: CoinMarketCap

According to CoinMarketCap, the token ranks 26th on the global cryptocurrency list with a trading price of $0.176, a circulating supply of approximately 23,828 million KAS tokens, and a market cap of $4.09 billion.

Kaspa is a cryptocurrency designed to provide a high-performance, scalable and secure blockchain platform. Kaspa’s distinctive feature is that it uses the GhostDAG protocol, which provides faster block times and higher transaction throughput than typical blockchains. Unlike standard blockchains, GhostDAG does not create orphan blocks in parallel. Instead, GhostDAG allows them to coexist while strengthening consensus.

The current price increase follows trader Christian Ludwig’s June 3 post noting potential catalysts that could push Kaspa’s price as high as $1 in the coming months. These include the introduction of Kaspa KRC20 smart contracts; The Kaspa network has growing potential to become the next best stablecoin transfer network.

Other potential factors that Ludwig mentioned to reach his price target were the Ethereum Virtual machine bringing the ETH network to Kaspa and the upcoming Blockdag upgrade that will increase network speed by up to 10x.

By early May 30, Kaspa’s hash rate had risen to around 300 PH/s, which remains a fraction of Bitcoin’s hash rate. However, the rate remains approximately 20 times higher than that of Ethereum Classic, making the attack even more difficult.

I think what’s going on with Kaspa Hashrate 🪡🧵

The initial hashrate increase in the December-March period was largely driven by retail. Thousands of Kaspa fans buy 1-2 KS0s or keep some KS3s and KS5s. This also includes early small-scale industrial miners like c#rate… pic.twitter.com/hULbL9Cfn1

— Christian Ludwig (@christi61026749) May 30, 2024

Kaspa’s network is based on one of Satoshi Nakamoto’s earlier concepts. Bitcoin’s creation schedule was expected to be significantly shorter. This idea led Kaspa to ensure rapid coin production by making halvings occur more frequently.

Kaspa will hold a maximum of 28.7 billion tokens and will be halved every year. At the current hashrate, more than 23 billion coins have already been produced, accounting for over 82% of the total supply. Competition to mine the remaining coins will intensify and miners will have to cover their costs through fees.

While the majority of KAS trading occurs through ByBit, Gate.IO, and KuCoin, the crypto community hopes to list on Binance. As Kaspa grows in popularity, miners may attempt to accumulate coins in the hope of seeing positive price movement.

KAS is relatively notable due to its massive supply and is almost among the top 25 assets in terms of market cap.

Kaspa has been distributed to approximately 500,000 addresses and has more than just the amount of “dust” on it. However, people are slowly adopting Kaspa in 2024 as they are more interested in meme tokens that are easier to acquire.

The Kaspa community expects a price increase of $1 from current levels. However, KAS can only get back on its feet when L1 narratives come to the fore. Kaspa’s blockchain leverages DAG structure, speed, and mining to increase its impact. The network is still behind in token creation and value-producing projects.