$KAS under 2.7¢ as hashrate keeps climbing

Hey, welcome to Kaspa Daily Pulse, here's what the Kaspa community's been buzzing about today.

First up, the biggest discussion centered on Kaspa’s layer one strategy. Some community members argued that Kaspa needs more end-user demand, transaction fee revenue, and practical applications directly on layer one. Toccata, vProgs, and covenants were repeatedly highlighted as technologies that could potentially support exchanges, payments, and other decentralized services. Others pushed back on the criticism, pointing to recent development activity and arguing that the latest hard fork has already opened new doors for builders.

That leads into today’s second highlight: covenant development appears to be gaining momentum. One builder said they were working with Argent and SilverScript, and had already created working testnet projects with help from AI, despite having limited programming experience. Community members also discussed Kron, Pepe, and possible covenant-based decentralized exchanges. The appeal is straightforward: native covenant enforcement, no bridge exposure, and fast trading where the main concern is market risk. Or, as one member put it, getting rugged in ten basis points.

Privacy and access were another major theme. Users shared a no-KYC route for acquiring layer one KAS by moving Polygon USDC into Igra USDC, swapping into iKAS, and then converting to layer one KAS. One reported receiving about 49 dollars and 23 cents worth of KAS from a 50-dollar purchase. The route was described as cheaper than some traditional swap services, although several users still acknowledged that centralized exchanges remain the easiest fiat on-ramp.

Price sentiment stayed deeply divided. KAS traded below 2.7 cents during the discussion, with some members predicting further downside and others continuing to buy. The prevailing mood was a strange mix of exhaustion, conviction, and dark humor. Some holders called themselves professional bag holders, while others welcomed the extended dip as more time to accumulate. Hashrate was also reported as continuing to climb, adding another contrast between network participation and weak price action.

Finally, the reported Coldcard-related Bitcoin theft sparked a detailed security conversation. Community members discussed roughly 1,400 stolen Bitcoin sitting across seven wallets, flagged addresses, and attackers allegedly using replace-by-fee bidding to outbid rescue transactions. That discussion reinforced a familiar lesson: self-custody security matters, and open source versus source-verifiable hardware remains a serious concern.

That's it for today's pulse. Let's see what tomorrow brings. Catch you then.