Hedera Price Tracker (HBAR) & Whale Tracker

What is Hedera

Hedera is a public distributed ledger that does not use a blockchain. It runs on hashgraph, a consensus algorithm invented by Leemon Baird in 2016 and commercialised through his company Swirlds. Baird and co-founder Mance Harmon launched the Hedera network in 2018 and opened it to the public in September 2019. The design aims at the throughput and predictable fees that enterprises ask for, and the network has processed billions of transactions, most of them from a handful of large applications.

The native token is HBAR. It pays for every transaction and smart contract call, is staked to secure the network, and is the unit in which the Hedera Governing Council prices its services. Fees are fixed in US dollars and converted to HBAR at the time of the transaction, so a token transfer costs a fraction of a cent regardless of the market. The live price, market cap and supply at the top of this page refresh automatically.

Hedera is unusual in being governed by a council of large companies rather than a foundation or a token vote. That structure attracts enterprise users and also draws criticism from people who want a fully permissionless network.

How Hedera works

Hashgraph replaces blocks and mining with gossip. Each node shares what it knows with random peers, including the history of who told whom, a process called gossip about gossip. From that shared history every node can calculate the order of transactions with the same result, so there is no need for a leader, a block proposer or a vote. The algorithm is asynchronous Byzantine fault tolerant, the strongest security class available for distributed consensus, and finalises transactions in a few seconds.

Three services run on top of consensus. The Hedera Token Service creates and transfers fungible tokens and NFTs natively, without smart contracts, which is cheap and fast. The Hedera Consensus Service gives any application a trusted, ordered log of messages, used for things like supply-chain audit trails and carbon credit registries. Smart contracts run on an Ethereum Virtual Machine, so Solidity code and tools such as MetaMask work with minor changes.

Consensus nodes were originally run only by council members. Since 2024 the code has been open source under the Linux Foundation's Hiero project and the roadmap includes permissionless community nodes. Anyone can already run a mirror node, which stores the full history and serves queries.

Supply and tokenomics

HBAR has a fixed maximum supply of 50 billion tokens, all minted at genesis. The Hedera treasury holds the unreleased balance and releases it on a published schedule that stretches into the next decade, funding network rewards, council operations, grants and ecosystem programmes. The circulating supply shown above rises as those releases happen.

Transaction fees are paid in HBAR and distributed to nodes rather than burned. Staking is native: any account can stake its balance to a node and earn rewards from a dedicated pool without locking tokens or risking slashing. Rewards are modest by design. Because fees are denominated in dollars, HBAR's price does not change what users pay, which is a selling point for businesses and a limit on fee-driven token demand.

History and milestones

The Hedera Governing Council was formed with a cap of 39 members, each serving limited terms. Members have included Google, IBM, Boeing, Deutsche Telekom, LG, Dell, Ubisoft, Standard Bank, Nomura and Tata Communications. Each runs a consensus node and holds one vote on network policy. The structure was designed to prevent any single company from controlling the ledger while keeping the people running it accountable.

Large applications arrived early. The Coupon Bureau processes US retail coupons on the consensus service, Avery Dennison tracks apparel, and several carbon credit platforms use Hedera for registries. The network also runs a large stablecoin and payments business through the HBAR Foundation's partnerships. In 2024 Hedera transferred its code to the Linux Foundation as Hiero, and in 2025 US asset managers filed for spot HBAR exchange-traded funds, which brought new brokerage demand for the token.

Where to buy and trade Hedera

HBAR is listed on Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, OKX, Bybit, Bitstamp and most other exchanges against the dollar and major stablecoins. Exchange-traded products tracking HBAR exist in Europe and Canada, and spot ETF applications progressed in the United States during 2025.

For self-custody, HashPack is the most used wallet, with Blade and Kabila as alternatives, and Ledger hardware devices support HBAR. SaucerSwap is the main decentralised exchange on the network. Note that Hedera accounts use a numeric ID format such as 0.0.12345 rather than a hex address, and some exchanges require a memo on deposits, so check the withdrawal instructions carefully.

Risks to understand

Hedera's enterprise focus means much of its transaction volume comes from a few business applications that pay very little per transaction, so high usage numbers do not translate into high fee revenue. Council governance is a strength for compliance and a weakness for people who value censorship resistance. The permissionless node roadmap has moved slowly.

HBAR's price fell more than 90 percent from its 2021 peak before recovering, and it reacts strongly to news about partnerships that sometimes produce less than announced. Treasury releases add steady supply. As with every guide on this site, this is a reference for the data above, not investment advice.

Hedera FAQ