What is KINE (KINE) crypto coin? The full story behind the failed DeFi derivatives project
Jan, 16 2026
The KINE crypto coin was never meant to be a speculative asset. It was designed as the utility token for Kine Protocol, a decentralized derivatives trading platform launched in March 2021 with big promises: 100x leverage, zero counterparty risk, and low gas fees-all built on Ethereum. But today, KINE is a ghost town. No buyers. No sellers. Almost no price movement. And yet, people still ask: What is KINE (KINE) crypto coin? Here’s the real story.
What KINE actually is
KINE is an ERC-20 token built on Ethereum, with a fixed supply of 100 million coins. Only about 20.2 million are in circulation as of January 2026. It was created by Kine Technology Ltd, a company registered in Singapore in December 2020. The token wasn’t sold as an investment-it was meant to power a trading platform called Kine Exchange. The platform used a system called peer-to-pool trading. Unlike traditional DeFi exchanges that match buyers and sellers, Kine let users trade directly against a liquidity pool. This meant no need to wait for someone else to take the other side of your trade. You could go long or short on Bitcoin, Ethereum, gold, or even wrapped fiat currencies-all with up to 100x leverage. It sounded like a dream for traders tired of slippage and failed fills. To make this work, Kine introduced two tokens: KINE for governance and rewards, and kUSD, a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar. Users deposited collateral (like ETH or BTC) to open positions and received kTokens in return. These kTokens represented their stake and could be traded or redeemed later. The whole system was governed by smart contracts that checked collateral levels before allowing trades.Why it looked promising in 2021
When Kine launched, the DeFi space was exploding. Platforms like dYdX and GMX were gaining traction, but they were still clunky. Gas fees on Ethereum were high. Liquidity was uneven. Kine claimed to fix that. Its biggest innovation? Allowing any Ethereum-based asset as collateral. You could use Wrapped Bitcoin, LINK, UNI, even stablecoins like USDC or DAI. Most competitors at the time only accepted ETH or a few major tokens. Kine said: Use what you’ve got. It also promised better economics for liquidity providers. Instead of earning tiny fees from sparse trades, LPs would earn KINE tokens as rewards. The idea was to bootstrap liquidity fast. And for a few months, it worked. The price of KINE hit $5.58 in March 2021. People were excited.What went wrong
By mid-2022, the cracks started showing. First, liquidity never took off. The peer-to-pool model needed deep pools to handle large trades without massive slippage. But few people deposited real money. Why? Because the rewards weren’t enough to offset the risk. And when trades did happen, they were tiny. By 2023, the 24-hour trading volume dropped below $100. Today, it’s around $97. That’s less than what some meme coins trade in five minutes. CoinMarketCap shows only 3,180 unique holders. That’s fewer people than live in a small New Zealand town. The price collapse tells the rest of the story. From its all-time high of $5.58, KINE crashed to $0.0017 as of January 2026. That’s a 99.97% drop. Even its 2024 peak of $0.49 is long gone. The market cap? Around $25,000. For comparison, dYdX’s market cap is over $1 billion. KINE is 40,000 times smaller.
Is the platform still usable?
Technically, yes. You can still connect your MetaMask wallet to Kine Exchange. The interface hasn’t changed much. You can still select assets, set leverage, and open positions. But here’s the catch: no one is trading. A Reddit user from July 2025 posted: “Tried to sell my KINE after holding since 2021. Couldn’t find a buyer on Uniswap. The pool is dead.” Another user on Bitcointalk said: “I tried to trade with 10x leverage. Got liquidated instantly because the price moved 30% just from my order.” That’s what happens when liquidity vanishes. Even small trades cause wild price swings. The system works in theory-but in practice, it’s unusable.Development and community have vanished
The last commit to Kine’s GitHub repo was in June 2023. No new features. No bug fixes. No updates. The official Telegram group, which once had hundreds of members, now has 52 active users-and most are asking if anyone still holds KINE. No roadmap. No announcements. No press releases. The team behind Kine Technology Ltd has gone silent. Even the documentation, once clear and detailed, hasn’t been updated since 2022. If you’re trying to learn how to use it today, you’re relying on archived guides from a project that’s effectively dead.How KINE compares to other DeFi derivatives platforms
| Platform | Market Cap | 24h Volume | Liquidity | Collateral Support | Active Users |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kine Protocol (KINE) | $25,000 | $97 | Near zero | Any ERC-20 | ~3,180 holders |
| dYdX | $1.2B | $480M | High | ETH, BTC, USDC | Over 1 million |
| GMX | $850M | $210M | High | ETH, BTC, AVAX, etc. | Over 500,000 |
| Kwenta | $180M | $85M | Medium | ETH, WBTC, USDC | Over 200,000 |
Should you buy KINE now?
No. If you’re looking to trade derivatives, Kine isn’t an option. The liquidity is gone. The price is stuck. There’s no reason to believe it will recover. Even if you bought every KINE token in circulation, you couldn’t sell it without crashing the price. If you’re holding KINE from years ago, you’re sitting on a paper asset with no practical use. You can’t stake it meaningfully. You can’t trade it. You can’t use it to open positions without risking total loss from slippage. KINE is not a failed experiment. It’s a dead one.What KINE teaches us about DeFi
Kine Protocol was not poorly designed. Its technical architecture was solid. The idea of peer-to-pool trading with multi-asset collateral was ahead of its time. But DeFi doesn’t reward good code alone. It rewards liquidity. It rewards community. It rewards trust built through consistent activity. Kine had the blueprint but never attracted the crowd. No marketing. No incentives. No transparency about why growth stalled. And once momentum died, there was no way to restart it. It’s a textbook case of how even smart teams can fail in crypto-not because they built the wrong thing, but because they built it for nobody. Today, KINE serves as a warning: in DeFi, innovation without adoption is just code on a blockchain.Is KINE crypto still active?
No. Kine Protocol has been inactive since mid-2023. There have been no updates to its code, no announcements from the team, and no meaningful trading volume. The platform still exists technically, but with near-zero liquidity and almost no users, it’s effectively defunct.
Can you still trade KINE tokens?
Technically yes, but practically no. You can find KINE on Uniswap V2 and a few small exchanges, but the 24-hour trading volume is under $100. Selling even a small amount will likely cause extreme slippage, and buyers are extremely rare. Most holders are stuck.
What’s the current price of KINE?
As of January 2026, KINE trades at approximately $0.0017. This is down over 99% from its all-time high of $5.58 in March 2021. The price has been flat for over a year, with no significant movement or catalysts.
How many KINE tokens are in circulation?
There are 20,211,925 KINE tokens in circulation out of a fixed total supply of 100 million. This means only about 20.2% of the total supply is available on the market. The rest is locked or unissued.
Why did KINE fail when other DeFi platforms succeeded?
KINE failed because it never attracted enough users or liquidity. Even though its technology was innovative, it lacked marketing, community engagement, and consistent incentives. Competitors like dYdX and GMX offered similar features but with real volume, active development, and stronger user bases. In DeFi, execution and adoption matter more than perfect code.
Is KINE worth holding as a long-term investment?
No. KINE has no clear path to recovery. There’s no development activity, no exchange listings gaining traction, and no community momentum. Holding KINE is not an investment-it’s holding a digital artifact of a failed project. The risk of total loss is near 100%.
What to do if you own KINE
If you still hold KINE tokens, you have three options:- Sell now, even at a loss. The price won’t recover. The longer you wait, the harder it becomes to find a buyer.
- Hold as a learning case. Keep it as a reminder of how even well-designed projects can collapse without user adoption.
- Forget about it. If the amount is small, it may not be worth the effort to trade. But don’t expect anything to change.