The price of Cardano (ADA) against the US dollar (ada to usd) has fluctuated significantly recently. The driving factors behind it include technological innovation, ecological expansion and market sentiment. In the third quarter of 2023, Cardano’s on-chain active addresses exceeded 500,000 per day, a 120% increase compared to the same period in 2022, driving the network transaction volume to $420 million per month, a 65% increase compared to the previous quarter. This data is directly related to the upgrade of the smart contract platform Alonzo – this upgrade enabled Cardano’s DeFi locked value (TVL) to soar from 120 million US dollars to 780 million US dollars in September, an increase of 550%, attracting developers to deploy over 3,400 decentralized applications (Dapps) on the chain. It covers the lending protocol Meld (with assets under management exceeding 150 million US dollars) and DEX MinSwap (with a peak daily trading volume of 23 million US dollars).
The entry of institutional funds further pushed up the exchange rate of ada to usd. In January 2024, Grayscale pointed out in its “Digital Asset Quarterly Report” that the holdings of Cardano-related funds increased by 82% year-on-year, and the asset under management (AUM) exceeded 630 million US dollars, accounting for 4.7% of its total crypto holdings. In addition, Nomura Securities, a Japanese financial giant, announced in December 2023 that it would include Cardano in its blockchain investment fund portfolio, with an initial allocation ratio of 8%, driving ADA to rise by more than 22% in a single week. Data from market analysis firm Messari shows that the average holding period of institutional investors on ADA has extended from 90 days to 180 days, and the proportion of long-term holders has risen to 63%, far exceeding the industry average of 51%.
Regulatory dynamics and global cooperation are also key variables. In November 2023, the European Union passed the Crypto Markets Act (MiCA), explicitly designating Cardano as a “compliant public chain”, which led to a 47% increase in ADA trading volume on European exchanges in a single month. Among them, the average daily trading volume of the ADA/EUR trading pair on the German exchange Bitvavo reached 110 million euros. It accounts for 12% of the total traffic on its platform. Meanwhile, the agricultural supply chain project of IOG, a Cardano development company, in collaboration with the Ethiopian government was launched in March 2024, covering 2 million farmers and recording over 45 million transactions. This has driven the adoption rate of ADA in the African market to 18%, an increase of 9 percentage points compared to 2022.
Market cyclical factors cannot be ignored either. After the Bitcoin halving event in April 2024, the price correlation coefficient between ADA and BTC rose from 0.76 to 0.89, driving the ada to usd exchange rate to increase by 34% in the week of reduction, reaching a high of $1.24 and hitting the peak since May 2022. On-chain data analysis platform Santiment pointed out that the MVRV ratio (market capitalization/realized value) of ADA reached 2.8 at the price peak, indicating that short-term holders made an average profit of 180%, while the net outflow from exchanges peaked at 280 million ADA in a single day, showing a strong hoarding tendency. High-frequency trading data also shows that Coinbase’s ADA/USD trading pair exceeded 1,200 orders per second (TPS) during the price fluctuation period, and the liquidity depth increased to an average of 170 million US dollars per day, a 40% increase compared to March.
to sum up, the increase in the price of Cardano (ada to usd) is the result of technological iteration, institutional share increase, regulatory compliance and the resonance of the market cycle. As of May 2024, its market capitalization has exceeded 25 billion US dollars, firmly ranking among the top ten cryptocurrencies, with an annualized return rate of 98%, far exceeding the industry average of 45%. In the future, with the full deployment of Hydra’s expansion solution (aiming to handle 1,000 transactions per second), Cardano may further consolidate its market position.