Helium (HNT) is one of the crypto projects with the most active and dedicated communities, which is constantly working on expanding its network by adding new nodes, known as Hotspots. Despite this, however, the crypto winter of 2022 has not been kind to the project, and Helium saw some heavy losses.
While the summer has been relatively calm for the project, with minor fluctuations both up and down, its price remained stable, sitting around $9. However, things started to change about a month ago, when the project started seeing a strong downward trend. It has been spiraling down ever since, with only a brief day or two of recovery from time to time, using every opportunity when the bear market’s pressure dropped, only to continue its drop once the pressure returns. This led the project all the way down to the current price of $4, which is also the lowest level Helium has seen since late February 2021.
What is Helium?
Helium (HNT) is a project that launched in July 2019, emerging as a decentralized blockchain-powered network for the Internet of Things (IoT) devices. It was created by three co-founders — Amir Haleem, Sean Carey, and Shawn Fanning, who originally started the company in 2013 with the goal of developing a people-powered network that would eventually lead to a wireless revolution of sorts.
They see Helium as a paradigm shift for decentralized wireless infrastructure. The project has launched a mainnet that allows low-powered wireless devices to communicate with each other and send data across the network of nodes that come in the form of so-called Hotspots. These are essentially a combination of blockchain mining devices and wireless gateways, which allow users to operate nodes and at the same time, mine rewards in HNT, the project’s native cryptocurrency.
Helium’s vision is to prepare a system that would push IoT communication to the next level, identify any inadequacies in the current infrastructure, and offer a more efficient alternative solution.
The way it actually works, to put it simply, is that network participants purchase Hotspots or can even build their own. Each hotspot then provides network coverage over a certain radius and mines HNT, as mentioned. The network coverage makes it possible for IoT devices to connect and communicate with one another and even send data to the internet and blockchain. This data can include anything, with one of the biggest use cases being collecting information collected by sensors and delivering that data to relevant services.
Another advantage is that this wireless coverage would often reach areas that are typically not covered by cellular networks, so even areas where there was no way of collecting data in the past would now be covered. With all that said, it is easy to understand why the project became so popular and why its community members are as supportive as they are.
This type of network could be used to power entire smart cities of the future, all in a decentralized — and still very rewarding — way.
Helium historical price performance
HNT’s earliest price data comes from early June of 2020, when the project started its journey with a price of $0.27. Its price grew slowly throughout the summer, reaching $0.65 about two months later, on August 10th, 2020. This was about the same time when Bitcoin price started surging, and while the altcoin market officially didn’t follow until 2021, HNT did jump up by $1, hitting $1.6 on August 16th — only a week after it hit $0.65.
It spent the rest of that year trying to stabilize and get used to the new height, but almost as soon as 2021 had replaced 2020, the project’s price started the climb that eventually took it higher than anyone had expected initially.
By February 1st of, 2021, the HNT price hit $2.37, but this was still only the beginning for Helium’s token. On February 12th — only 11 days later — the price pretty much doubled, hitting $4.55. The growth continued in early March, and it took HNT to $18.6 by April 6th. HNT found a strong resistance at $20, which did not allow it to approach closer than this. In fact, its price was rejected to the support at $13, but HNT made a comeback on May 2nd, once again hitting $18.6. Things could have played out differently this time, but the market crash that came on May 11th pushed HNT deeper down, as it did the rest of the crypto industry.
Still, Helium recovered later that summer, after a new bull run pushed it forward, starting on July 20th. This time, the resistance at $20 fell without issues, and HNT managed to reach $26.3 before correcting again, this time to a support level at $17.
What followed was the largest, sharpest surge that the project has ever seen, starting on September 29th. By November 14th, HNT price skyrocketed from $17 to $52.7, hitting a new all-time high that is still its highest peak to this day. At that point, however, the bear market, which kickstarted the new crypto winter, gripped the token, dragging it down to a support at $24. HNT price once again recovered in late December, right before Christmas, this time coming only to the resistance at $40, where it remained until January 6th, 2022.
Helium price performance in 2022
As mentioned, Helium started the year with its price actually heading up from $38 to $44. Many saw this as a sign that the new year is starting with another bull run and that the crash seen in November and December was just a repetition of what happened in May 2021.
However, things took a major turn on January 6th, when the HNT price suddenly started sinking, as it went from $44 to $32 in only three days. After the support at $32 stopped the drop, the price recovered to $36, only for the crash to continue, this time taking the token back to $20. This level served as the project’s strongest support for the next several months, during which HNT got back up, first to $28, then to $32, then it crashed to $20 again, and again, it went to $28 for one last time on April 4th.
After that, the bear market decided to take things to the next level, forcing HNT to sink to a brand new support at $8, which it reached in the final days of May after sinking for nearly two whole months. From May 27th until April 15th, this level acted as a support that prevented Helium price from sinking deeper while allowing it to launch attempts at recovery whenever the bearish influence weakened.
However, mid-August brought another bearish push-down, which led the token to a steady drop all the way down to its current price of $3.91. In the last 24 hours, the price sank by 6.71%, and it now appears that the support at $4 will be unable to prevent the token from sinking further.
The market sentiment
The market sentiment regarding Helium has not been that positive. The project has been seeing issues and doubts ever since the proposed move to Solana. The proposal came from one of Helium’s core developers, who argued that moving from Ethereum to Solana would greatly increase the Helium chain’s operating efficiency.
With almost a million hotspots installed worldwide, the project started seeing significant data throughput. The surge in interest, growing number of use cases, and the general idea behind the project led to monumental growth, but the downside is that the project is now struggling to process all the data.
After the move to Solana was proposed, the project’s price sank by 15%, and that drop led to a total price crash of 47% in the last month. Even before this, Helium was marked as one of the biggest weekly losers due to ts price performance in 2022 and the general behavior of the token. Some reports suggested that investors are abandoning Helium, as well as Filecoin, in favor of some alternatives such as Chronoly.io, prioritizing real-world asset ownership over decentralized data storage and transfer that Helium and Filecoin are pushing.
Others have suggested that the buyers’ accumulation failed in HNT and that the project is now sinking to a new bottom instead of seeing buyer support that would have otherwise propelled him upwards. Finally, all of this development came after early August reports claiming that Helium listed Salesforce and Lime as partners and that this was a lie that was since debunked.
With both companies coming out and denying a partnership with the project, a huge scandal erupted Lime commented that it had only taken part in the initial testing of Helium back in 2019, but not an ongoing partnership. Salesforce, on the other hand, denied having any connection to the project. All in all, the last month or so was pretty bad for Helium, and the project will have to do a lot of work to recover the investors’ confidence and trust.
What will happen next?
Finally, the big question now is what is next in store for Helium. For the time being, the HNT coin price continues the downtrend, which has led to a number of people looking into the project and trying to assess where this carouse of action might take it.
It is true that Helium has apparently made some mistakes if the reports are to be believed, and the global crypto market behavior certainly did not help improving the situation. However, Helium has always been strong under favorable conditions, and for the time being, this has not yet changed.
To learn more about Helium, visit our Investing in Helium guide.
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