Hamster Kombat (HMSTR) token plunged hard after launching its much-anticipated airdrop this week. Data by CoinGecko shows that the token’s price tumbled by over 13% on Friday, bringing its market cap to over $428 million. It has dropped from Thursday’s high of $0.10 to a low of $0.0066.
Hamster Kombat airdrop
Hamster Kombat is the most popular tap-to-earn platform in the industry with over 300 million users and 37 million YouTube followers.
These users accumulated billions of tokens by just tapping the button, following its social media accounts, and watching its YouTube videos. The goal was to accumulate these tokens and convert them into fiat currencies.
Unfortunately, Hamster Kombat’s token did not do well after it was listed in top exchanges like Binance, Bitget, OKX, and Bybit. This price action is mostly because of increased selling by people who had accumulated the tokens.
Additionally, most users were disappointed in that they did not receive all their accumulated tokens. Instead, users can only claim about 60% of their tokens.
HMSTR’s price action is also because of the anticipated dilution as more tokens will be added to the network. Data by CoinGecko shows that over 64 billion coins are now in circulation against a maximum supply of 100 billion coins. This means that more than 34 billion tokens will be emitted in the coming years.
Hamster Kombat’s price action has mirrored that of many tap-to-earn coins like Notcoin and Pixelverse, which crashed by double digits after their airdrop.
The performance is also in line with that of other coins like Sweat Economy and StepN, which were highly popular before their airdrop. Sweatcoin had over 50 million users while StepN had more than 10 million. Their tokens rose initially and then suffered a harsh reversal and have never recovered.
Implication for Pi Network
Hamster Kombat’s plunge has a big implication for Pi Network, the first tap-to-earn cryptocurrency.
Pi Network is similar to Hamster in that people accumulate tokens by just tapping a button on the app. They aim to accumulate as many tokens as possible and then convert them into fiat currency when the airdrop happens.
Like Hamster, Pi Network is a highly popular platform with over 30 million pioneers worldwide. However, the main difference is that Pi has remained in an enclosed mainnet since 2021.
Its developers have identified three main things that needs to happen for the mainnet launch to happen. They want to do a KYC verification for at least 15 million pioneers, have at least 100 dApps in the ecosystem, and the market to be friendly. Their goal is to launch the mainnet either in 2024 or early 2025.
Therefore, the performance of popular tap-to-earn tokens like Notcoin, Pixelverse, and Catizen means that the odds are that it too will retreat when it gets listed by most exchanges.
Another piece of evidence is that the Pi Coin IoU has remained near its all-time low and is down by 72% from its highest point this year. This IoU was launched in 2022 and was quickly disowned by Pi Network’s developers. It is often seen as the best predictor of how Pi will trade after its airdrop.
