Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has disputed CoinMarketCap's designation of $1.81 as the all-time high for Midnight's NIGHT token, arguing that the asset never genuinely traded at the reported level.

Midnight is a data-protection-focused network developed by Input Output Global, the blockchain engineering firm behind Cardano.

Hoskinson made the remarks in response to reports highlighting NIGHT's steep decline from its purported $1.81 all-time high. According to the Cardano founder, NIGHT hit $1.81 at its launch in December 2025, but the figure did not represent a level at which investors could meaningfully buy the token.

Instead, he argued that the reading resulted from the initial price-discovery process rather than sustained market trading. No one bought at that price, he said, adding that treating $1.81 as NIGHT's legitimate all-time high could paint a misleading picture of the token's historical market performance.

Hoskinson also likened the situation to a hypothetical $2 trillion valuation reading for Zcash, arguing that an extreme figure recorded during a token's launch should not necessarily be treated as a genuine market valuation. His comments were published in a report by The Crypto Basic.

His dispute underscores a broader question in crypto market coverage: which reference prices should be treated as canonical when newly launched assets print their most extreme levels during opening price discovery.

CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko List Different All-Time Highs

The comments followed a CoinGape report that described NIGHT as trading roughly 90% below its $1.81 all-time high after the token surged nearly 159% to $0.048 in late September.

CoinMarketCap currently highlights $1.81 as NIGHT's all-time high, while CoinGecko records a substantially lower peak of $0.1185. The gap between the two figures materially affects how the token's historical performance is measured. Using the $1.81 figure makes NIGHT appear to have fallen more than 97% from its peak when trading around $0.05, whereas CoinGecko's $0.1185 peak puts the token's decline at roughly 57%.

Discrepancies of this kind stem from the fact that the two platforms maintain independent price datasets and apply their own methodologies for sourcing and validating historical pricing, and assets in their launch phase—when price discovery is at its most volatile—can be especially prone to divergent records. For readers tracking the token, which reference high is used effectively determines whether NIGHT's current trading is framed as a deep drawdown or a comparatively mild one.

NIGHT Extends Recovery Above $0.05

Meanwhile, NIGHT has continued its recovery following the late-September rally. The token recently climbed above $0.05 and reached a multi-month high of $0.05257 before retracing toward $0.05.

CoinMarketCap also ranked NIGHT as the strongest gainer among the top 100 cryptocurrencies over a 24-hour period, with gains exceeding 24%. The token significantly outpaced the second-biggest gainer on the list, which advanced 8.97% during the same period.

The token's latest momentum has coincided with several developments across the Midnight ecosystem.

Midnight Expands Mainnet Capabilities

Midnight recently announced that permissionless smart contract deployment is now live on its mainnet. The development allows developers to deploy smart contracts directly, while also enabling applications to deploy contracts on behalf of users.

In addition, Midnight highlighted several ecosystem developments, including GeroWallet's support for Midnight dApps, a Google Cloud Midnight testnet faucet, the launch of Noctis Zone on Preprod, and Ura Finance's testing of DUST sponsorship for applications, with DUST serving as the network's secondary token used to cover transaction costs.

These developments provide additional context for NIGHT's recent rally. However, they do not, on their own, establish the specific factors responsible for the token's price movement.

How aggregators ultimately record NIGHT's launch-era pricing, and how developer activity takes shape now that permissionless deployment is live, are among the observable markers for the network's next phase.

Source: CryptoNewsNet