KAIO (KAIO) is the Ethereum token of an RWA protocol that puts institutional fund shares on-chain, and it closed 28 September 2026 up 124.4% at $0.0331507 on CoinMarketCap. The token first traded on 6 May 2026. KAIO's blog, its white paper page and DefiLlama's data carry nothing dated that explains the jump.
The KAIO price went from $0.0147713 on 27 September to $0.0331507 on 28 September, on $8.34 million of volume, 9.9 times its 1 to 27 September daily average. That buying met no new supply. CoinMarketCap's 681.25 million circulating count is exactly the 10 billion total minus five wallets that each took one allocation on 1 May 2026 and haven't moved a token since.
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KAIO at a glance
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Detail
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What it is
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The token of KAIO, an RWA protocol incubated by Laser Digital (Nomura) and WebN Group
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Chain and contract
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Ethereum, 0x00bac91fd8f5b4a0dc03c8021139b76f6549ee7e
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Supply
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10 billion fixed, 681.25 million circulating (CoinMarketCap)
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28 Sep close
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$0.0331507, up 124.4% on the day (CoinMarketCap)
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Top-ten holders
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99.04% of supply (Ethplorer, read 12:45 UTC 29 Sep)
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On Phemex
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Not listed, Phemex has no KAIO market
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What Is KAIO (KAIO)?
KAIO is a protocol that issues tokenized shares of regulated investment funds, and the KAIO token is the ERC-20 coin that governs it. Laser Digital (Nomura) and WebN Group incubated the project, according to KAIO's post on its $8 million strategic round backed by Tether. The 20 April 2026 post puts KAIO's total raised at $19 million.
Its homepage lists five fund tokens, with BlackRock's dollar liquidity fund sold as CASH and Mubadala Capital's private-markets fund sold as MCAS. None of the five is the KAIO token, and holding KAIO gives you no share of any of them.
Our guide to real-world assets in crypto covers how off-chain assets such as fund shares and bonds end up as tokens.
Why Is KAIO Trending?
KAIO is trending because of one daily bar. CoinMarketCap's hourly data shows the climb starting in the 01:00 UTC hour of 28 September and peaking in the 05:00 hour at $0.0424965. The price then slid to about $0.025 in the 11:00 hour and finished the day at $0.0331507, 22.0% under that high.
That close was KAIO's highest since 7 June and 155% above its lowest close, $0.0129798 on 25 July. From 28 July to 27 September every close had held between $0.01305 and $0.02053. The only warning came on 26 September, when the price rose 12.0% on $2.67 million of volume, about 3.5 times the average day from 1 to 25 September.
CoinGecko's series shows a 126.8% gain across the same 24 hours, from $0.0146725 at 00:00 UTC on 28 September to $0.0332775 at 00:00 UTC on 29 September.
No dated news explains the move. KAIO's blog has posted nothing since a 23 July 2026 post on its Mubadala Capital launch, and the latest dated item on its MiCA white paper page is a revised white paper of 17 September. DefiLlama's KAIO dashboard shows TVL of $39,652,171 at 00:00 UTC on 27 September and $39,650,057 at 00:00 UTC on 28 September, a change of about $2,000.
The rest of the RWA trade went the other way. Another RWA token, ONDO, fell 11.66% on Phemex's ONDO/USDT perpetual on 28 September while BTC/USDT fell 1.13%. With no news and no sector bid behind it, the move belongs to KAIO's own thin market, where the $8.34 million traded that day equalled 36.9% of the float's value at the close.
How Does KAIO Work?
KAIO runs two kinds of token, and you shouldn't mix them up. The fund tokens are tokenized shares of regulated funds that only institutional and accredited investors can buy. Minimums on the homepage run from $100 for CASH to $100,000 for MCAS.
The KAIO token is the protocol's access and voting coin. Its MiCA white paper says a fund issuer must hold at least 500,000 KAIO to use the tokenization engine, and holders vote on protocol settings with time-weighted votes.
The model follows the pattern in our piece on tokenized real-world assets and their blockchain use case, with the fund held off-chain and its shares moving as tokens.
KASH is the retail product in the pipeline, a separate token with its own waitlist open since 5 February 2026. The post describes one token over a basket of funds from managers including BlackRock and Hamilton Lane, targeting up to 8% a year for buyers outside the United States and Canada.
Two TVL figures circulate for KAIO, and they measure different things. The project's site counter, fed by its own tally of fund-token values, read $132.7 million at 12:57 UTC on 29 September. DefiLlama's count stood at $39.65 million on 28 September, down from $60.8 million on 30 June. Neither number measures demand for the KAIO token.
KAIO Tokenomics
KAIO tokenomics start with a fixed supply of 10 billion tokens, all minted once when the contract went live on Ethereum on 16 April 2026. The verified source code has no function to mint more and no owner key, and any holder can burn their own tokens. Total supply read exactly 10 billion on 29 September, so no one has burned any.
Five wallets hold 93.19% of that supply. Each received a single transfer between 12:41 and 12:43 UTC on 1 May 2026, and none has sent a token since. Their balances add up as 3,281.25 million plus 3,100 million plus 1,487.5 million plus 1,100 million plus 350 million, or 9,318.75 million KAIO.
Take 9,318.75 million from 10 billion and you get 681.25 million, the exact circulating figure CoinMarketCap has shown since 11 May. So the five wallets CoinMarketCap leaves out of its count sold nothing into the 28 September move.
At the 28 September close those 681.25 million tokens were worth $22.58 million, while the full 10 billion came to $331.5 million, 14.7 times more. That gap is the supply that hasn't reached the market, the thing our explainer on what fully diluted market cap means teaches you to price in.
The float is thinner than 681.25 million suggests. Ethplorer's holder list at 12:45 UTC on 29 September showed holders six to ten with another 584.96 million, about 86% of the circulating count, among 506 holders in all. The list doesn't say who controls any of them.
The white paper revised on 17 September 2026 gives the issuer's parent foundation a treasury of 1.7 billion tokens, or 17% of supply. It says team, investor and strategic tokens vest on schedules "to be disclosed in the token allocation table", and neither the white paper nor KAIO's documentation publishes that table. A third-party unlock calendar we found cites its own research, so treat its dates as estimates.
Method: we read the verified contract on Blockscout and each large wallet's transfers on Ethplorer at 12:45 UTC on 29 September, and CoinMarketCap's daily series twice, at 12:44 and 12:58 UTC.
How to Buy KAIO Safely
Phemex lists no KAIO market, spot or futures. On 29 September at 12:52 UTC, CoinMarketCap tracked 17 KAIO pairs, all on centralized exchanges.
Match the contract before you buy anywhere. The real KAIO token lives at 0x00bac91fd8f5b4a0dc03c8021139b76f6549ee7e on Ethereum, the address KAIO's own white paper page links to. A DexScreener search on 29 September also returned a BNB Chain token named KAIO with the ticker KASH, which borrows the name of KAIO's unlaunched retail product.
Size the order to the book. At 12:52 UTC on 29 September those 17 pairs held about $16,800 of sell orders within 2% above the price and about $15,200 of bids within 2% below it. One exchange accounted for $10,500 of that sell side. Our explainer on what an order book is in crypto shows how fast a market order eats through a wall that size.
Skip the on-chain pools. DexScreener showed two Uniswap KAIO/USDT pools at 12:52 UTC on 29 September, holding $976 and $675 of liquidity. One opened on 7 July 2026 and the other at 02:44 UTC on 29 September. At that size a few hundred dollars moves the pool price hard, the cost our guide to what slippage is and how to manage itexplains.
What Are the Risks of KAIO?
Ten addresses hold 99.04% of supply
Ethplorer's list at 12:45 UTC on 29 September put 99.04% of all KAIO in ten addresses. The largest holds 3,281.25 million KAIO, 4.8 times CoinMarketCap's entire circulating count.
The vesting schedule is unpublished
KAIO's white paper says locked team and investor tokens exist and prints no dates for their release. Without that table you can't date the next supply release, and one transfer from a large wallet would change the float overnight.
About $16,800 of depth under a $22.58 million float
The 28 September candle ran from $0.0145 to $0.0425 inside one day, on books that held about $16,800 within 2% above the price at 12:52 UTC on 29 September. Thin books like that are the setup our guide on how to spot and avoid a pump and dump describes, and they cut as fast on the way down.
KAIO trades far below its first close
KAIO's first daily close on CoinMarketCap was $0.191906 on 6 May 2026, and the 28 September close still sat 82.7% below it.
The token earns nothing from the funds
Fund returns go to fund-token holders. The white paper gives the KAIO token no revenue share or redemption right, so its value rests on issuers needing 500,000-token minimums and on the weight of its governance votes.
Is KAIO a Good Investment?
KAIO is a bet that the protocol's business will reach its token, and on 28 September the price moved on nothing the business did. For the token to earn a place in a portfolio, three things would have to show up in public, dated form.
Issuers would need to buy and hold the 500,000-KAIO minimum in numbers you can count on-chain. KAIO would need to publish the vesting table its white paper promises. The order books would need depth to match the volume they carry. None of the three was in place when we checked. Until they are, the price follows a float that five silent wallets could swamp.
It suits a trader who wants a small, deliberate position in a thin RWA token and can afford to lose all of it. It doesn't suit anyone after the yield of BlackRock or Mubadala funds, because the KAIO token gives no claim on them.
For RWA exposure with a deeper book, Phemex lists ONDO as a USDT perpetual.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is behind the KAIO crypto project?
KAIO began as Libre Capital and renamed itself KAIO on 30 July 2025. Its 20 April post names Shrey Rastogi as chief executive. The MiCA white paper names LN Technology (TIV) Limited, a British Virgin Islands company owned by a Cayman Islands foundation, as the token's issuer.
Is the KAIO token contract audited?
The white paper points to a Cyfrin audit completed on 7 January 2026 whose report file is named for a receipt-token vault, three months before the KAIO token contract went live. The token contract itself is standard OpenZeppelin code.
What is the KAIO price after the 28 September close?
CoinMarketCap closed KAIO at $0.0331507 on 28 September 2026. Its all-time intraday high came on the first day of trading, $0.257947 on 6 May 2026, which puts the 28 September close 87.1% below that peak.
Where can I buy the KAIO coin?
On centralized exchanges other than Phemex, which has no KAIO market. Its MiCA white paper says the issuer sought admission to trading in the European Union, with the Central Bank of Ireland named as the home regulator.
Final Thoughts
KAIO's funds hold $132.7 million by the project's own count, yet on 28 September its token priced off a float worth $22.58 million and order books that a five-figure trade could push. Whoever holds the five untouched wallets decides what that float becomes, and KAIO hasn't said when any of it can move. A 124% day on that structure shows how little money it takes to move KAIO, in either direction.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.
