BTC/USD $68,420 +2.8%
ETH/USD $3,540 +1.4%
SOL/USD $142.80 -0.6%
BNB/USD $605.20 +0.9%
XRP/USD $0.62 -1.2%
DOGE/USD $0.18 +5.4%
BTC/USD $68,420 +2.8%
ETH/USD $3,540 +1.4%
SOL/USD $142.80 -0.6%
BNB/USD $605.20 +0.9%
XRP/USD $0.62 -1.2%
DOGE/USD $0.18 +5.4%
Policy

QNT token: a £100 Overledger licence a year, 14.88 million supply cap

The QNT token is an access right. Anyone using Overledger, the connectivity layer built by the British firm Quant Network, pays an annual licence for it, and that licence is payable in QNT. T

AnonymousCryptoCompass newsroom
October 11, 2026
12 min read
NEWS
Hero article visual / chart / editorial image
CryptoCompass editorial visual for policy coverage.

The QNT token is an access right. Anyone using Overledger, the connectivity layer built by the British firm Quant Network, pays an annual licence for it, and that licence is payable in QNT. That is the short answer to what the token is for. The longer answer is more interesting, because it leads to a gap between what the token can do and what it has to do according to the company's own filings.

The price stood at $242.50 on Sunday midday, down 3.4 percent in a day and 5.5 percent over the week, which puts QNT 44th by market capitalisation according to CoinPaprika. Our running Quant price prediction places that move in context. This article is about something else: the mechanics behind it.

What the QNT token is: an access right without voting power

QNT is a utility token. A utility token is a digital voucher that entitles the holder to use a particular service, not to a stake in the company. That is exactly how the token transparency filing Quant lodged with the research platform Blockworks describes it: QNT is a utility token that customers use for Quant products and services, staking included.

What the filing explicitly does not say matters more. It records that QNT carries no governance rights. There is no vote on the roadmap, no voting weight by token count, no veto. Holding QNT means holding no piece of the protocol and no share in Quant Network Ltd. That separates QNT from tokens where the size of a holding decides parameters.

The filing is equally explicit in ruling out a structure that comes up often in discussions of QNT: a protocol treasury. No DAO or protocol treasury exists, it states. Fees instead go straight to Quant Network Ltd as commercial revenue, an ordinary British company. So if you read that QNT is "locked in the treasury", check what that claim rests on. It is not in the company's transparency filing.

The Overledger licence: £100 a year, payable in QNT

The actual payment obligation dates back to December 2021. Quant announced a licence fee for Overledger that applies to all customers and developers. The amount: £100 a year. The payment: in QNT, settled through a common browser wallet. Existing customers were given three months of free use at the time.

The sum looks small, and it is. A hundred pounds a year is not a line item a bank board discusses. The figure is therefore no lever for the price, and anyone using it that way is doing the sums wrong. The value of this fee lies elsewhere: it gives the token a function in the business model at all. Without that payment obligation, QNT would be a token alongside a piece of software rather than inside it.

Dark leather folder with a blank contract sheet, a brass seal stamp and red sealing wax The Overledger licence is a contract with an annual fee. What is bought is a right of use, not a share in the company.

Why the same licence can also be settled in dollars

This is where many accounts turn imprecise. The same transparency filing that confirms payment in QNT also records that users can pay platform fees in US dollars or take out a subscription with QNT. The wording permits both. An obligation to buy tokens in order to use Overledger does not follow from it.

That is no detail, it is the core of the investment question. If Quant's business grows, demand for QNT grows out of it only where customers actually choose the token route. Should they pay in dollars, company revenue rises without a single token being bought on the market. This distinction between corporate success and token demand belongs at the start of any valuation, not in a footnote.

On the question of whether licence tokens are locked for the term, third-party figures circulate. No primary company source describing such a lock-up was available for this article. We therefore do not treat a lock-up as fact here. The vesting history, by contrast, is documented: executives and staff went through a twelve-month lock after the sale closed, and transfers were restricted for two months. Today, the filing says, the tokens held by the company are unrestricted and sellable at any time; no vesting overhang remains.

Supply: 14,881,364 QNT as the cap

The most widely cited cap is 14,881,364 QNT. The large market data providers list this number as the maximum supply, and it has been unchanged for years. No new tokens are created; there is no payout to validators steadily expanding supply, of the kind familiar from proof-of-stake networks. Supply is fixed.

Measured against that cap, CoinPaprika's data puts 12,072,738 QNT in circulation, or 81.1 percent. The remainder sits with the company and in non-circulating holdings. At a price of $242.50 that works out to a market capitalisation of around $2.93 billion on daily turnover of some $115 million. Liquidity is solid for an asset of this size, but it is spread across markedly fewer venues than for the large names, which can show up when larger quantities are sold.

Circulating supply: the data sources differ by 2.47 million QNT

Put the numbers side by side and the discrepancy is larger than a rounding difference. The Quant token transparency filing lodged with Blockworks cites as its authoritative supply evidence a total supply of 14,612,493 QNT and a circulating supply of 14,544,176 QNT. The market data providers list 12,072,738 QNT in circulation.

The two figures are 2,471,438 tokens apart. At Sunday's price that is a difference in market capitalisation of roughly $600 million. Depending on which number you follow, the valuation of QNT moves between about $2.9 billion and $3.5 billion. cryptoticker.io compiled this analysis on October 11, 2026 by comparing the two publicly available supply disclosures for QNT.

We deliberately leave that spread unsmoothed. For investors, two things follow. First: metrics such as market capitalisation or fully diluted valuation are not hard numbers for QNT but depend on the source chosen. Second: where an article argues from one of these metrics without naming its source, half the information is missing. With every comparison, check which circulating supply was used.

The 45,467,000 in the smart contract: what the Etherscan figure means

It gets more confusing still for anyone looking at the contract directly in a blockchain explorer. There, a maximum total of 45,467,000 QNT appears, a good three times the usual cap. The transparency filing classifies that number as a theoretical maximum hard-wired into the contract and treats it as an artefact: tokens were never issued in that quantity.

In practice that means the explorer figure describes what the contract code would allow, not what exists. For sizing up supply it carries no information as long as no issuance takes place. Use it for a diluted valuation and you arrive at numbers that have nothing to do with actual supply. That the same metric carries three different values in three places is the real finding of this section.

Macro shot of a processor chip with golden contact pins and circuit traces radiating outwards In the Fusion Rollup, QNT is to carry the fee for gas and execution, meaning for the computing work in the network.

Fusion Rollup: QNT as the gas token for 74 networks

The token's second documented function lies in the technology. A rollup is a layer that bundles many transactions and passes the result on in aggregate to the networks beneath it. Quant launched its Fusion Rollup on mainnet on June 2, 2026; according to the company it connects 74 networks. That figure comes from the provider itself and is not independently verified. A rollup that writes state data to many networks at once is the exception; the usual designs hang off exactly one base chain.

For the token, one statement in the transparency filing matters more than the number of networks: the multi-ledger rollup will use QNT as its native token for gas and execution fees. Gas is the charge for computing work in the network. That would give QNT a role which does not depend on a customer's purchasing decision but arises technically. Note the tense: the filing describes this in the future. Whether, and to what extent, such fees already accrue is left open.

The Clearing House: what the mandate leaves open for QNT demand

The reason Quant is being talked about at all right now is a mandate from the banking sector. The Clearing House, operator of one of the large US payment networks, selected Quant on September 24, 2026 as the provider of the interoperability, orchestration and transaction management layer for its tokenised money initiative. Twenty-five large banks are behind the project, with a launch planned for the first half of 2027. We set out what the mandate covers on September 26 in our report on tokenised deposits. Alongside it, Quant has announced a connection to MX.3, the capital markets platform from vendor Murex.

And here the circle closes on the open question. A banking mandate is a revenue promise for Quant Network Ltd. Whether it turns into demand for QNT is a separate matter. Against an automatic link stands the transparency filing itself, under which platform fees can be settled in dollars. In favour stands the announced role of QNT as the rollup's gas token. Which of the two routes will carry the payments of those 25 banks is not publicly documented. Anyone telling you today that the mandate necessarily means higher token demand is passing over that gap.

One documented date is fixed: the first half of 2027. Until then, every statement about payment flows is an expectation, not a fact. For observers that means watching two things once operations begin: whether fees accrue in QNT, and whether that shows up in the balances of the addresses involved.

Buying and custody: where QNT can be traded in Europe

QNT is a token on Ethereum and therefore tradable in principle on any exchange that has listed it. For investors in the European Union, the MiCA regulation has applied since the national transitional periods expired: service providers offering or holding crypto assets here need authorisation. Newcomers therefore check a provider's authorisation before their first purchase. Our crypto exchange comparison gives an overview of the authorised venues and their costs.

On custody, nothing applies to QNT that does not apply to any other token on Ethereum. Leave it on the exchange and you hold a claim against the provider. Transfer it to an address of your own and you hold the token itself, along with responsibility for the key. Because QNT sits on Ethereum, the destination address has to support ERC-20 tokens; an address from another network is the most common way to lose tokens. An address from another network will not accept the token.

A note on staking, which the transparency filing names as a use: staking income is treated differently for tax than pure capital gains. If you put QNT to work, record the income separately.

Holding period under section 23 EStG: what to check on QNT before selling

For private investors in Germany, crypto assets still fall under the private disposal rules of section 23 of the Income Tax Act. Where more than twelve months lie between purchase and sale, the gain is tax-free. Inside that period it is taxable once the exemption threshold is passed. This rule is the strongest lever you have on an asset such as QNT, and it hangs on a date rather than on a view of the price.

Three things matter here. First, every additional purchase counts as its own transaction with its own start date; buy over months and you have several periods running side by side. Second, swapping QNT for another token is a sale, even where no euro changes hands. Third, moving between two of your own addresses is not a sale and does not restart the period, provided you can document the connection. That exchanges will report their data to the tax authorities in future makes clean records of your own more important, not redundant.

QNT token: until the 2027 launch, demand stays the open question

The token's functions are documented; the demand that follows from them is not. Sizing up QNT therefore takes three steps:

  1. Fix a supply figure and stick to it. Decide whether you work with 12.07 or 14.54 million tokens in circulation, and use the same number in every comparison. The 45,467,000 from the contract belong in no valuation. Tools that keep holdings and metrics in order are in our comparison of tax and portfolio tools.
  2. Watch the payment route, not the headline. From the first half of 2027, what counts is whether fees actually accrue in QNT. Until then the banking mandate is a revenue promise for the company and not documented token demand. If you buy during that time, check your venue's authorisation first in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.
  3. Settle custody and the start date before buying. Decide whether the token stays on the exchange or moves to an address of your own, and note the start date for the holding period on the day of purchase. Which devices are suitable for self-custody is set out in our hardware wallet comparison.

(As of October 11, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)