At the start of the year, Cardano’s market cap was hovering around $5.6bn. However, in five weeks, a flood of bullish sentiment has propelled this figure to $28.4bn. This was enough to leapfrog the likes of XRP and Polkadot to take the fourth spot on CoinMarketCap.
Likewise, over this period, the price of ADA is up +420%. A rejection at $1 earlier this morning was somewhat expected. This historical resistance level has held since January 2018. Nonetheless, with a convergence of bullish fundamentals coming to fruition, analysts remain optimistic going into 2021.
Source: ADAUSD on TradingView.com
Fundamental Reasons to be Bullish on Cardano
Cardano’s smart contract era is well on the way. Developers IOHK launched the Mary Goguen testnet last week.
At this moment, user-defined tokens are being tested and monitored before the mainnet rollout. Assuming all goes to plan, devs will deploy on the mainnet at the end of this month.
“The deployment of Goguen ‘Mary’ marks a significant stage in Cardano’s journey. When Mary turns her crypto key within the network, we will unlock the mechanism for users to create their own tokens for a myriad applications: Decentralized Finance (DeFi), and countless other business use cases.”
On March 26, 2021, the D-parameter will reach zero. When this happens, the Cardano network becomes 100% decentralized, meaning IOHK will have given up all block production control. From then on, independent stake pool operators will be fully responsible for the task.
Cryptocurrency is often criticized for the lack of real-world application, especially when viewed through a first-world lens where trading or speculation forms the bulk of its use.
But Director of African Operations at IOHK, John O’Connor, revealed the firm is about to secure a contract with an African government. There are no further details on who or how. But it will see millions of users onboarded into the Cardano ecosystem for real-world use.
ETH-ADA Showdown About to Hot up
Despite Cardano’s impressive market cap gains of late, Ethereum, with its $200bn market cap, still towers over the competition, making it the smart contract platform to beat.
However, analysis of the situation puts Cardano in the ascendency. Meanwhile, Ethereum, more specifically ETH 2.0, is years away from being finished. This leaves time for competing chains to make their mark.
Commenting on the recent growth of the ecosystem, IOHK CEO Charles Hoskinson said we earned it. He spoke passionately about doing things the hard way and not shying away from the challenges.
“there’s an inevitability behind Cardano, not only are we here to stay, we’re also going to make a very big impact and put a big f*cking dent in the universe because we earned it.”
With so much happening in the Cardano ecosystem right now, many believe bigger things are coming in 2021.