On 18 September 2026 QNT, the token of Quant Network, cost 63 dollars. Nine days later it briefly traded at 373 dollars, almost six times as much. On the morning of 28 September it was back at about 219 dollars.
The explanation that went round sounds convincing. On 24 September The Clearing House, the clearing house owned by 25 large US banks, picked Quant as the technology supplier for its new on-chain payment network. On the same day UK Finance, the British banking association, reported the first live payments on a platform Quant built. Two days earlier the analysis team 8Blocks had calculated that about 65 percent of all QNT sat in a treasury controlled by Quant. Big banks as customers and a scarce supply would be a good reason for a rising price.
Whether that adds up depends on three questions. What does Quant do? What does the token have to do with it? And what do the supply and the blockchain show?
What Quant does
Quant Network is a London software company founded in 2015 by Gilbert Verdian. Its main product is called Overledger. It is an interface that lets bank systems work with different blockchains without connecting to each one separately.
The customers are real, and they are big:
- The Clearing House, 24 Sep 2026: Quant supplies the layer that will connect the new network to the existing US payment systems RTP and CHIPS from the first half of 2027.
- UK Finance, 24 Sep 2026: first live payments with tokenised sterling deposits from seven banks, including Barclays, HSBC and Lloyds, on a platform "developed by Quant".
- Experiments: the UK Regulated Liability Network in 2024, Project Rosalind with the Bank of England in 2023, the ECB's digital euro innovation platform in 2025.
All of these projects tokenise bank deposits or central bank money, on infrastructure that only vetted participants can access.
On the customers, the story holds.
But paying Quant is not the same as paying for the token.
Company, technology, token: three different things
When people say "Quant", they often mean three things at once.
The company. Quant Network Ltd in London is the operating company, a private company with no stock listing. Through an intermediate holding it belongs to Quant Holdings Ltd in the Cayman Islands. Its first audited accounts, for the year to September 2025, show revenue of 11.52 million pounds. 99.8 percent of that is licence fees from sister companies in the same group. What banks pay therefore ends up with group companies that publish no accounts.
The technology. Overledger is software that banks license. The blockchains it connects do not belong to Quant. The releases from The Clearing House and UK Finance name no public token. Six Quant releases on the bank projects, searched in full, do not contain the word QNT once.
The token. QNT is a token on Ethereum, issued in a 2018 token sale. It is not a share and not a claim on the company's revenue. Its only link to the business is the licence.
Buying QNT buys neither the company nor the technology. It buys a token whose only link to the business is the licence.
That is why the tokenomics decide whether the bank deals reach the token.
Supply: the 65 percent are a 2018 burn
| QNT | |
|---|---|
| created on 25 June 2018 | 24.43m |
| sent to the token contract on 14 September 2018, no longer movable | 9.55m |
| accessible | 14.88m |
| newly created since June 2018 | 0 |
On 14 September 2018 the address that had created the token sent 9.55 million QNT to the address of the token contract itself. The contract cannot move its own balance, so those QNT are gone for good. That address and those 9.55 million are what 8Blocks is counting. It is not a treasury Quant controls. It is a burn completed eight years ago. CoinGecko lists 14.61 rather than 14.88 million accessible QNT; where the difference comes from is not documented.
The fixed cap QNT is marketed with, on the other hand, is not written into the code. The key that managed the 2018 token sale could technically create more QNT, at least about 6.5 million under the contract code. That has not been used so far.
Who holds the rest can only partly be said. The ten largest addresses apart from the token contract hold 25.3 percent of the accessible supply. None of them is labelled as Quant, and two holding about 620,000 QNT each have not moved since 2018.
QNT became scarcer in 2018, through a one-off burn. The 65 percent in a treasury do not exist.
That leaves the licence. Has it made QNT scarcer since?
The licence: the lock was never used
In December 2021 Quant introduced an annual Overledger licence of 100 pounds, "payable in QNT". How the tokens get locked is described by Quant in a public GitHub repository, with the contract addresses listed "for transparency":
- The customer allows a contract that Quant calls the Treasury Factory to take QNT from its address.
- Quant calls that contract, and it creates two new contracts for the customer: a payment channel and an escrow deposit.
- The QNT stay there until expiry and cannot be withdrawn before.
Every licence paid this way therefore leaves a trace on Ethereum. The Treasury Factory (0x836f…7560) was set up on 30 June 2020. Since that day it has not received a single transaction and has not created a single contract for a customer. The other published treasury contracts have not moved any QNT either. As of 28 September 2026.
Two other places fit that picture. Quant's FAQ page now says: "You can pay your platform fee in USD, or you can subscribe with QNT." And the UK company's audited accounts record no consideration in tokens ("no … non-cash consideration") and no crypto assets.
Through the published contracts, not a single QNT has been locked for a licence in six years.
Did the price respond to the bank projects anyway?
The price: no tailwind from the bank projects until August
Calendar years from Binance monthly candles:
| Year | QNT | BTC |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | −40.7 % | −64.2 % |
| 2023 | +30.7 % | +155.6 % |
| 2024 | −23.0 % | +121.3 % |
| 2025 | −34.8 % | −6.3 % |
| 2026 (to Aug) | −12.1 % | −10.3 % |
One dollar in QNT in August 2021 became 45 cents by the end of August 2026. One dollar in Bitcoin became 1.90 dollars. In the 33 months in which Bitcoin rose, QNT lagged 23 times. In the 28 months in which Bitcoin fell, QNT held up better 15 times. The bank projects of 2023 to 2025 ran during this time, and the price lost against Bitcoin in every one of those years.
Then came September. By 28 September QNT was up more than 250 percent. For 26 September, at +54 percent the largest daily jump up to then, no new announcement could be found. On 27 September another 89 percent followed.
The bank deals are what set off the jump, not what drives the token. As far as anything can be checked, no money flows from them into QNT.
The obvious objection
"Quant can lock QNT through other addresses or buy it for its bank customers itself. The old contracts being empty means nothing."
Possibly. But then there is no address, no amount and no set of accounts that shows it. Quant published the mechanism in 2020 so that it could be checked, and has named no other address since. Scarcity that cannot be checked is a claim, not a property of the token.
What this means for you
If you buy QNT because of the banks, do not count on their contracts creating demand for the token or shrinking its supply. Nothing shows either today.
The same check works for any token that advertises locks or burns:
- Is there a published address where tokens are locked or burned?
- Do tokens arrive there, and how many?
- Do token revenues or token holdings appear in the company's accounts?
For QNT the answers are: yes, no, no.
A lock only counts once tokens sit in it.
There is one place to watch: the first call to the Treasury Factory, address 0x836fe8f597dc6cf4fb86bd3e86ad724dc4327560. The open question is whether Quant will publish an address and an amount of locked QNT when The Clearing House network starts in 2027.
Seven claims, checked
| Claim | Who, when | What the data says | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| About 65 % of all QNT sit in one treasury address that Quant controls | 8Blocks, 22 Sep 2026 | The address is the token contract. The 9.55m QNT arrived there in one transaction on 14 Sep 2018 and cannot be moved. | does not hold |
| Licence fees are locked in QNT and shrink supply | explainer pages, incl. KuCoin, Altcoin Buzz | The published Treasury Factory has never been called since it was set up on 30 Jun 2020. Quant has published no other lock addresses. | not verifiable |
| The Overledger licence is "payable in QNT" | Quant, 15 Dec 2021 | FAQ today: pay in USD or subscribe with QNT. The accounts record no consideration in tokens. | partly holds |
| Supply is fixed at 14.6m QNT | CoinGecko figure | About 14.88m accessible. New QNT are technically possible; none has been created since 2018. | partly holds |
| Quant has a "deal with 25 US banks" | The Cryptonomist, 25 Sep 2026 | The Clearing House is owned by 25 banks. Its release of 24 Sep 2026 names Quant as supplier, with no bank count. | partly holds |
| Quant is a "pioneer partner" on the digital euro | Gilbert Verdian, 6 May 2025 | One of about 70 participants on the ECB innovation platform, tested in a simulated environment. No contract for the digital euro. | partly holds |
| Quant is "the only company with proven, production-grade capability" for this link | Quant, 24 Sep 2026 | Self-description. R3 and Digital Asset, among others, work on bank projects in the same field. | not verifiable |
FAQ
How can I check the Treasury Factory myself? Enter the address in an Ethereum explorer such as Etherscan or Blockscout. It lists every transaction and every contract the address has created. On 28 September 2026 every entry dated from 30 June 2020.
Why does the token contract report 45.5 million QNT? The number is stored in the contract as a fixed variable, not as a sum of balances. 24.43 million were actually created, and 9.55 million of those have been inaccessible since 2018.
Does "technically possible" mean Quant will create new QNT? No. It means the contract code does not stop the managing key from doing so. No QNT has been added since 25 June 2018.
How are the returns calculated? Opening price on the first day of the month to closing price on the last, QNT and BTC each against USDT on Binance, without fees. July 2021, the month of the Binance listing, and the running September 2026 are left out of all comparisons.
All QNT monthly returns in US dollars
| Year | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 34.8 | 59.5 | −2.2 | −28.7 | −11.5 | |||||||
| 2022 | −45.7 | 19.4 | 19.0 | −32.6 | −23.3 | −24.6 | 91.8 | −5.9 | 46.9 | 17.6 | −25.7 | −14.9 |
| 2023 | 34.9 | −11.0 | −1.1 | −7.8 | 1.3 | −7.6 | 1.4 | −9.0 | −9.2 | 14.2 | −3.0 | 37.7 |
| 2024 | −25.4 | 12.0 | 14.9 | −24.7 | −9.1 | −14.7 | −11.0 | −9.3 | 16.8 | −19.2 | 67.9 | 7.4 |
| 2025 | 5.3 | −14.0 | −28.7 | 9.2 | 43.6 | −0.5 | 7.6 | −10.3 | −2.6 | −20.8 | 27.4 | −31.8 |
| 2026 | −0.7 | −7.6 | 9.7 | −1.4 | 4.6 | −10.1 | −7.2 | 1.6 | 257.6* |
Figures in percent. *September 2026 to 28 Sep, 09:31 UTC, month not complete.
Not investment advice, not a recommendation, not a forecast. Historical patterns are not a promise.
Sources: The Clearing House, releases 5 Jun 2026 and 24 Sep 2026 · UK Finance, GBTD release 24 Sep 2026 · Quant Network: releases 16 Jun 2023 and 24 Sep 2026, licence announcement 15 Dec 2021, FAQ (27 Sep 2026), overledger-treasury-community on GitHub (Code/README.md) · ECB, digital euro innovation platform report (26 Sep 2025) · UK Finance / R3 on the Regulated Liability Network (17 Sep 2024) · Companies House, Quant Network Ltd (09798383), accounts 2024 and 2025 · Blockscout: Treasury Factory, Treasury and Treasury Deposit (28 Sep 2026) · Ethereum node, Blockscout and Ethplorer: QNT contract, mint and transfer logs, balances (27 Sep 2026) · Etherscan address labels (27 Sep 2026) · CoinGecko API (27 Sep 2026) · Binance QNTUSDT/BTCUSDT monthly and daily candles (28 Sep 2026) · 8Blocks blog, 22 Sep 2026 · The Cryptonomist, 25 Sep 2026 · Gilbert Verdian on X, 6 May 2025
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