In the week to 7 September 2026, Helium's HNT token lost part of the rally that followed the 28 August Celina, Texas announcement. CoinGecko's daily data show HNT at $0.644 on 31 August and $0.540 on 7 September, with market capitalisation down from $142.7 million to $107.6 million. Daily trading volume fell from $230.2 million to $9.6 million over the same days. The price was still about twice its level before the news ($0.253 on 28 August). Since then the decline has continued: CoinGecko's lowest close between 6 and 24 October was $0.399, on 24 October.
What moved HNT: Celina's public Wi-Fi joins the Helium Network (28 August 2026)
On Friday 28 August 2026, Helium announced that Celina, Texas, had turned Wi-Fi the city already operates into carrier offload coverage on the Helium Network. Phones connect automatically, with no app, sign-in or settings change. According to Helium's announcement:
- The first sites are the Celina Public Library, the Ralph O'Dell Senior Center and participating downtown businesses.
- The network carries about 100 GB of data per day across Celina, a figure Helium reports itself.
- More locations are due to come online this autumn.
- Helium lists Redondo Beach and Sausalito in California, and New Orleans in Louisiana, as other participating cities.
- Amy Alexander, the City of Celina's Director of Information Technology, is quoted: "Helium let us turn Wi-Fi we already own into coverage."
The deployment details come from one source, Helium's own blog. They have not been confirmed separately by the City of Celina. Crypto news outlets tied the price jump to the announcement. CoinGecko's daily data are consistent with that timing:
| Date (2026, CoinGecko daily) | Price | Market cap | 24h volume |
|---|---|---|---|
| 28 Aug | $0.253 | $41.1M | $4.0M |
| 29 Aug | $0.424 | $46.9M | $6.1M |
| 30 Aug | $0.766 | $78.9M | $90.1M |
| 31 Aug | $0.644 | $142.7M | $230.2M |
| 3 Sep | $0.685 | $93.2M | $19.3M |
| 5 Sep | $0.593 | $107.6M | $35.3M |
| 7 Sep | $0.540 | $107.6M | $9.6M |
Market cap and price do not always move together in this table because CoinGecko records each figure at its own timestamp. Use the trend, not single cells.
The week in numbers
- Range: CoinGecko's daily prices from 31 August to 7 September ran between $0.499 (2 September) and $0.685 (3 September).
- Volume: Daily volume fell from $230.2 million on 31 August to $9.6 million on 7 September. Interest dropped quickly once the news was priced in.
- Distance from the peak: At $0.540, HNT was about 99% below its all-time high of $54.88, set on 12 November 2021 according to CoinGecko and other market data sites.
What does HIP-149's floor and cap pay a deployer?
Enter the data a deployer offloads per day, the payer rate and the per-gigabyte rate earned before HIP-149 to see daily earnings once the floor and cap apply.
| Data offloaded per day | Payer rate per gigabyte | Rate earned per gigabyte before the floor and cap | Daily deployer earnings after floor and cap |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 GB | 0.1 $/GB | 0.03 $/GB | 5 $ |
| 100 GB | 0.1 $/GB | 0.05 $/GB | 5 $ |
| 100 GB | 0.1 $/GB | 0.3 $/GB | 30 $ |
- Under HIP-149 the floor is a target of half the payer rate. The top-up is capped at HNT that was recently burned, so the floor may not be paid in full.
- Deployer earnings above three times the payer rate go to veHNT stakers instead of deployers.
- Every input is your own figure. None of them describes a particular Hotspot or city.
This multiplies your inputs under HIP-149's floor and cap and nothing more. It does not convert to HNT or model HNT's price, and it leaves out whether recent burns can fund the floor and the separate supplement mint.
The supply question: what HIP-149 changes
HIP-149, "Helium Utility and Emissions Realignment", is listed as Approved in Helium's official HIP repository. Its start date is 2 June 2026. It matters for anyone reading HNT's price, because it changes both what deployers earn and how much HNT can exist.
Earnings floor and cap for deployers
- Floor: a target minimum of half the per-gigabyte offload price that Nova sets under HIP 143. At the current payer rate of about $0.10/GB, that works out to $0.05/GB. Helium says deployers previously earned "closer to $0.03 per gigabyte".
- Funding the floor: the top-up is capped at HNT that was recently burned. Helium says this "adds nothing to the total supply".
- Cap: deployer earnings are capped at three times the payer rate, about $0.30/GB. Anything above the cap goes to veHNT stakers instead of deployers.
A separate supplement mint
HIP-149 also includes "Decision 2", an operations and growth supplement. The HIP text describes it as follows:
- About 141 million HNT, minted each epoch into a multisig vault run by the Receiving Entity, which is currently Nova Labs, Inc.
- The supplement "does not flow to on-chain Hotspot rewards".
- In the HIP's words, "Effective max HNT supply rises from ≈206M to ≈347M."
- The mint is bounded by hardcoded timestamps. It runs flat for about 12 months, then tapers to zero about 36 months after minting starts.
CoinGecko still lists a maximum supply of 223 million HNT. That figure may not yet include the supplement.
What to watch next
- Real usage: whether more cities follow Celina, and whether data volumes grow beyond Helium's self-reported 100 GB per day.
- Burn compared with new issuance: the deployer floor is funded from recent burns, but the supplement is a new mint stream. Burn needs to keep pace with it to offset the added supply.
- Volume: the late-August spike came on volume above $200 million a day. By late October, daily volume was around $2 million to $3 million (CoinGecko).
Limitations: Celina's usage figures come from Helium alone. Prices are CoinGecko daily snapshots, not intraday highs and lows.
