On September 26, 2024, the HMSTR token was listed on  major exchanges, including  Bybit, Binance, OKX, allowing players to cash Hamster Kombat's virtual currency in for real assets.

However, the founders of Hamster Kombat pushed back the listing and went through with the vagueness of details about token distribution and pricing without clarity for participants. And here come the million-dollar questions: whether active players would benefit from all this and why the listing feels like a scam with so many tokens unavailable to so many players.

Project Tokenomics

The total supply is 100 billion HMSTR tokens, distributed as follows:

• 60% - First season in progress, players will be allocated 60 billion HMSTR.
• 15% - 15 bln HMSTR will be given to second season players whose date is not known yet by nobody.
• 8% - 8 bln HMSTR will remain with the developers.
• 6% - 6 billion HMSTR are reserved for game-activity organizing partners.
• 4% is given to market makers for the purpose of stabilizing the price, and another 4% for advertisement of the project.
• 3% are reserved for the launch pool which generally provides mining of new tokens and stakes.

At the first stage, it was planned to release 64.38% of tokens in circulation, most of which fall to the players' share. The more actively they developed their hamster, the more tokens they earned.

The fall depends on a range of factors:

1. Passive income — the profit the virtual hamster generates per hour
2. Number of keys — they could be won in the mini-game
3. Performing daily activities
4. Referral program participation
5. Achievements

According to analysts, the average volume of the drop, that is, the number of tokens received, is around 2000-3000 HMSTR. On the pre-market of the exchange Bybit, the price of the token was about $0.01, but as soon as trading opened, in a rush, the price collapsed by almost 20%. Thus, an average player can expect to get $15-25. However, it is relevant to take into consideration the fact that not all participants will be able to get such a big reward amount.

Scandal before HMSTR Listing

More than 300 million players entered the game, but only about 130 million took part in the drop. The rest either didn't collect enough coins or had passive income, and 30 million didn't make it on time and missed the deadline to specify their method of withdrawal. The team says it will be possible to specify wallets later.

On September 23, developers on their Telegram channel announced that 2.3 million cheaters had been blocked-in total, 6.8 billion tokens were seized (11% of the total distribution). Half of this amount will be burned, while the remaining half will be given to honest players.
However, a lot of people saying that they hadn't cheated were blocked too. For now, there isn't any appeal mechanism, and it is also not known whether this will be provided. Thus, many active players have been left without the HMSTR tokens they wanted.

Conclusion

Currently, there aren't any serious reasons for investment in HMSTR by its buyers, except for the popularity of the project, reflected in the sharp drop in the token price right after the start of trading. Even in case of further growth, a question about the sustainability of such growth is widely open because similar projects often face a very long decline. 

The most reasonable option is to sell HMSTR tokens in the near future and perceive the project as a cultural phenomenon, not as an investment.