Key Highlights
- Hoskinson disputes NIGHT’s $1.81 ATH, saying no one actually bought the token at that price during its December 2025 launch.
- CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko show different ATHs, with CoinMarketCap listing $1.81 and CoinGecko recording $0.1185.
- NIGHT has recently recovered, climbing above $0.05 and reaching $0.05257 as Midnight also launched permissionless smart contract deployment on its mainnet.
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has challenged CoinMarketCap’s record of Midnight’s NIGHT token reaching an all-time high of $1.81, saying that price did not come from normal market trading.
Hoskinson made the claim on X after a report focused on NIGHT’s large fall from the reported peak and its recent price recovery on October 2. The report says that NIGHT reached $1.81 during its launch in December 2025.
However, Hoskinson says that number should not be treated as the token’s real market high because investors were not actually buying NIGHT at that price. He said the figure came from the early process of finding a market price when the token launched.
“You guys have to stop reporting fake news,” Hoskinson said in response to reports about NIGHT’s decline from $1.81. He added, “No one bought at that price,” while accusing CoinMarketCap of misrepresenting the token’s price.
Why the launch price is being questioned
According to Hoskinson, the $1.81 figure resulted from the token’s initial price-discovery process rather than sustained market trading.
He compared it with a hypothetical situation where Zcash showed a $2 trillion value, saying an extreme number seen during a launch should not automatically be treated as a real market value.
The issue becomes clearer when NIGHT’s records from different crypto data websites are compared. CoinMarketCap lists $1.81 as NIGHT’s all-time high, while CoinGecko data as at October 3 (5:28 p.m. UTC) records a much lower peak of $0.1185.
This difference changes the story of NIGHT’s price fall.
If the $1.81 figure is used and NIGHT is trading around $0.05, the token appears to have fallen by more than 97.2 % from its highest point. But using CoinGecko’s $0.1185 peak puts the fall at roughly 57.8%.
NIGHT climbs back above $0.05
Meanwhile, this comes as NIGHT has also recovered from its late-September lows. According to the weekly chart on TradingView as at October 3 (5:28 p.m. UTC), the token jumped over 123% to about $0.040 in late September after falling heavily from its peak.
It then moved above $0.05 and reached $0.05257 before pulling back toward the $0.05 level.
Midnight adds new features to its mainnet
At the same time, Midnight has been adding new features to its network. On October 2, the project announced that permissionless smart contract deployment was now live on its mainnet. This means developers can deploy smart contracts directly, while applications can also deploy contracts for users.
Midnight also pointed to other developments around the network. GeroWallet has added support for Midnight dApps, while Google Cloud has a Midnight testnet faucet. Noctis Zone has launched on Preprod, and Ura Finance is testing DUST sponsorship for applications.
These developments come as NIGHT continues its recovery, but the information provided does not establish that any one of them caused the recent price rise.
For now, the biggest question around NIGHT is still its reported $1.81 peak. CoinMarketCap counts it as the token’s all-time high, while Hoskinson says it was only a launch-time price that did not reflect real trading. That difference could change how investors view NIGHT’s entire price history.
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