Hedera's Token Price Spikes Prematurely After Google Joins the Network's Governing Council

Google Cloud developer advocate Allen Day speaks at Invest: Asia 2019.After Hedera Hashgraph announced Google would be joining its governing council on Tuesday, the price of the network's native token HBAR rose above 5 cents for the first time since the network's launch and above 2 cents for the first time in a month.

As part of the body of advisers who oversee software changes for the network and ensure the hashgraph's decentralization, Google Cloud Platform will run a node and make hashgraph analytics available alongside Google's other public DLT datasets, Google Cloud developer advocate Allen Day wrote in a blog post.

"We're not providing material financial support, purchasing Hedera coins or providing any other endorsement of Hedera's network or currency," he said.

Google also said it has no plans to use the Hedera Consensus Service, which allows members to plug private networks into the public network.

Rather, Google joined to "Provide technical guidance and validate the technology," Day said.

Hedera's public testnets and mirror nodes run on Google Cloud.

When Hedera Hashgraph had its mainnet launch in September, six of the 39 governing council slots were filled.

Even as the price of the network's token, HBAR, tanked and Hedera delayed token distributions to SAFT holders in an effort to shore up the price, none of the members have left the governing council.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly listed Google Cloud Platform as the entity joining the Hedera governing council.

Following the publication of this article, a spokesperson clarified that Google, not its cloud subsidiary, as was originally announced in a press release, would be joining the council.