At Kite (KITE) the one-year lockup expires in early November 2026, and around 1.11 billion KITE come free in a single tranche. Measured against the total supply of ten billion tokens that is 11.1 percent. Measured against the amount that can actually be traded today it is 43 to 46 percent. The Kite unlock therefore enlarges the circulating supply by almost half in one day, and that is why holders are looking more closely now than they would at an ordinary monthly instalment.
This article works through three things: where the 1.11 billion tokens come from, how the sum compares with daily trading turnover, and which part of the date is actually documented. The most important caveat first: the amounts are fixed, the calendar date is inferred. That is why this article says “early November” and gives no cut-off with a time attached.
What exactly happens at the Kite unlock in early November
A token unlock is the moment at which contractually locked tokens become available to their owners. Until then they exist, but they can be neither sold nor transferred. A cliff is the harshest form of it: instead of a monthly instalment, the lock on a whole block falls away at once, and the amount hits the market within a day.
At Kite both apply. The MiCA white paper of Kite AI Ltd. from October 2025 sets out the rule in one sentence: the team and investors are subject to a one-year lockup followed by a four-year release. Of the ecosystem and community allocation, 30 percent was free immediately and the rest runs off linearly over four years. For the module allocation it was 60 percent immediately. The total supply is capped in the same document at ten billion KITE, and the circulating supply at launch stood at 27 percent of that.
Anyone who wants to run their own numbers before the date will find the procedure step by step in our guide on how to work out a token unlock yourself. The mechanics are the same at every project; only the figures change.
Why 11 percent of the total supply acts like 43 to 46 percent in the market
Most unlock reports quote the share of the total supply. That figure is correct and still the less important one for an investor. Only what is in circulation can be sold, and at a young project the circulating amount is a fraction of the total supply.
At KITE the circulating supply on October 17 sits between 2.391 billion tokens (CoinGecko) and 2.568 billion (CoinMarketCap), depending on the data provider. The two houses count the same tokens differently, which is why a range stands here instead of a smoothed average. Set the 1.110 billion tokens coming free against that and the increase works out at 43.2 to 46.4 percent.
For context: roughly 25.8 percent of the total supply has been unlocked so far. After early November it will be a good 36 percent, and some 6.3 billion KITE remain locked. The cliff does not end the releases. It is their largest single step.
Four cliff pots and one running instalment: where the 1.11 billion KITE come from
The tranche is made up of five items, and they read differently from one another. Four of them are genuine cliffs; one is a running linear instalment that happens to fall on the same date:
- Team: 500 million KITE. Unsellable for twelve months, now available for the first time.
- Investors: 300 million KITE. The same lockup rule as for the team.
- Community airdrop: 200 million KITE. Widely spread, and so a correspondingly large number of individual decisions.
- Modules: 50 million KITE. The share for the operators of the specialist services in the network.
- Ecosystem growth: around 60.4 million KITE. Not a lockup that ends, but the next slice of a running four-year plan.
For the question of selling pressure, the first two items are the decisive ones. 800 million tokens sit at addresses that could not sell anything for a year even if they had wanted to. The widely spread airdrop pot tends to behave differently: many small holders decide one by one, and some of them never claimed their entitlement at all.
$131 million released against $11 million to $17 million in daily turnover
A token count on its own says little. It becomes meaningful only in relation to what the market absorbs on a normal day. At a price of around $0.1185 the tranche is worth some $131.5 million. Against that stands daily turnover of $11.3 million (CoinGecko) to $17.3 million (CoinMarketCap).
That gives a figure worth remembering: the amount coming free equals 7.6 to 11.6 trading days. Alongside it sits the market capitalisation of $283 million to $304 million, ranked 148th and 110th respectively depending on the provider. The release is therefore worth roughly half of the entire circulating supply valued to date.
That expressly does not mean this sum will be sold. Nobody can know how many of the recipients will hold. It means the market could not absorb it in a day if a larger part of it went to the sell side. Holders who want to put their position in order before the date will find the venues, their fees and their deposit routes in our comparison of crypto exchanges.
The date is softer than the amount: November 1, 3 or 17
Here lies the honest gap in this event. The MiCA white paper states the rule but no calendar date: it speaks of a token launch “expected in November 2025”. What is documented is the start of trading itself. The exchange HTX announced on November 3, 2025 the listing of KITE/USDT for trading. One year on, that leads to November 3, 2026.
CoinMarketCap’s unlock database, by contrast, puts a day marker on November 1, 2026, without a time. And the same MiCA document names November 17, 2025 as the date of admission to trading, which would be a third possible anchor. Three sources, three readings, and not one of them names a minute.
In practice that means the following for a holder: the window opens on November 1 and is open by November 3 at the latest. Anyone setting an order or a stop level against it takes the earlier marker rather than the later one. A date that arrives two days early costs more than one that arrives two days late.
Is the cliff already in the price? The view over 24 hours and seven days
A market expecting a large unlock often prices it in weeks ahead. At KITE little of that is visible so far. The price stands at about $0.1185 on October 17, down around 1.3 percent on the day and 8.1 to 8.9 percent on the week. That is an ordinary move lower in a weak market and not a pattern that points to anticipation.
No price forecast follows from that, and none stands here. Two readings sit side by side. The first: because the date is barely priced in, it hits the price without warning. The second: because analyst attention for a project ranked between 110th and 148th is thin, the reaction stays thin too, and the large holders sell over weeks instead of in a single day. Which of them applies will only show in November.
How differently such dates turn out is visible in our own coverage. At Rain and its unlock the circulating supply and the trading volume were similarly far apart, and at Plasma (XPL) the one-year cliff was followed by a fixed monthly schedule. A cliff is a test of market absorption rather than a verdict on a project.
The Kite unlock and German tax: what changes for holders
For investors in Germany the tax side hangs on their own acquisition date, not on the project’s unlock date. Under section 23 of the Income Tax Act, crypto assets held privately are subject to the one-year holding period: hold for longer than a year and then sell, and no income tax falls on the gain. Sell inside the year and the gain is taxed at the personal rate, provided gains from private disposal transactions in the calendar year exceed the threshold of 1,000 euros.
Anyone who bought KITE at the trading launch in November 2025 therefore reaches the one-year mark at roughly the same time as the cliff. Anyone who came in later sells inside the deadline. The order of purchases counts by acquisition date rather than by instinct, and that is exactly why a clean schedule pays off before a date on which many holders act at the same time. Tools for that are set out in our overview of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.
Whether the holding period stays in this form is open. The Bundestag rejected its abolition in October 2026, and a cabinet date passed without a decision; our report on the reform of the crypto holding period of October 16, 2026 records where the process stands. For November 2026 the deadline applies unchanged. This section does not replace tax advice.
Kite AI as a layer 1 for AI agents: what KITE is needed for in the network
Behind the token sits a layer 1 network of its own, meaning a blockchain with its own security rather than a layer on top of someone else’s. Kite AI describes it as a proof-of-stake network with EVM compatibility, tailored to payments between autonomous AI agents: agents are meant to hold a verifiable identity, keep to fixed spending limits and settle tiny amounts among themselves. Alongside sit what it calls modules, semi-autonomous sub-networks for individual AI services that settle with the main network.
In this structure KITE is the stake for operating roles. The white paper names the thresholds: a module operator has to deposit 30 million KITE, a validator one million, a delegator 166,667. That is relevant to the unlock question, because any token tied up in such a role cannot be sold on the market at the same time. For anyone still unsure what staking means: it describes locking tokens to secure a network, in return for a reward.
Whether the recipients of the cliff tranche take that route cannot be predicted and is not publicly documented. All that can be evidenced is that the route exists.
Where KITE can be traded: MiCA white paper and venue
KITE trades on Binance and HTX among others and is therefore reachable from Germany too. That a MiCA white paper exists for the token is a separate piece of information: the European regulation on markets in crypto assets requires such a document before a token is admitted to trading in the EU. It does not replace supervisory approval. The document itself states expressly that no competent authority of a member state has approved it and that the applicant alone is liable for the content. What MiCA demands of providers and how much of it bites by 2026 is set out in our overview of the MiCA licensing obligations for crypto companies.
For the choice of venue that means the admission of the token and the authorisation of the exchange are two different things. A platform with a MiCA licence falls under the supervision of a European authority, for German customers BaFin, and has to keep client funds segregated. A token with a white paper on an exchange without a licence does not bring that protection with it.
Be the first to comment