Hedera: Why the blockchain alternative’s HBAR token is soaring
The digital ivy is growing: Hedera and its HBAR token are among those crypto projects that can show very, very strong growth in 2024. HBAR has grown by a whopping 700 percent in the last month, and in the last seven days alone it was up by around 170%. This makes Hedera the fastest-growing token of the last three months, apart from the memecoin “Peanut the Squirrel” (PNUT).
This underlines once again: It is altcoin season. As reported, it is altcoin season again when 75% of the top 100 coins have performed better than Bitcoin in the last 90 days. HBAR is one of them. Although the token reached its highest value in 2021 with a price of around $0.57, with a price per token currently around $0.35, it is not far off.
At first glance, it is surprising that Hedera is currently beating most other coins and tokens in terms of growth figures. Hedera actually does not see itself as part of the blockchain circus and even wants to offer an alternative technology to blockchain. “Hedera is the only public ledger that uses the hashgraph consensus, a faster and more secure alternative to blockchain consensus mechanisms,” says the project. The technology is designed to handle more than 10,000 transactions per second with a low latency of just a few seconds.
The Altcoin Season has officially begun – what does it bring?
A Ledger of Corporates
Unlike many blockchains, however, not everyone with enough tokens (Proof of Stake) or mining power (Proof of Work) can participate in the Hedera network. Instead, there is a wheel – the Hedera Council – which currently has 39 companies or organizations as members, which guides the network’s fortunes. These include Google, Deutsche Telekom, Ubisoft, Mondelez, Hitachi, Boeing, ServiceNow, Dell, Standard Bank, IBM and Chainlink Labs. This makes Hedera a corporate alternative to Ethereum or Solana.
The fact that the HBAR token is now taking off has a lot to do with the USA. More precisely, once again with Donald Trump. Because a certain Brian Brooks is considered, along with a few other names, as a candidate for the important position of the next head of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). As reported, the current incumbent Gary Gensler (known as a crypto opponent) is stepping down in January and needs a successor. Brooks was CEO of Binance.US for a few months in 2021, before that he was head of the legal department at Coinbase from 2018 to 2020, and was nominated twice by President Trump for a five-year term as Comptroller of the Currency. In addition to Brooks, Paul Atkins is also considered a candidate for the position of SEC head.
In any case, Brooks is also a board member of the HBAR Foundation and thus has influence on the further development of Hedera. The rumors about a possible future SEC role for Brooks alone are enough to cause the HBAR price to rise. This development is also helped by the fact that Hedera will be used more widely in the future, for example as part of “FedNow”, a new infrastructure for instant payments from the US Federal Reserve. In addition, new uses for Hedera are constantly popping up in terms of Web3, DePIN or RWAs.
