ADA, Cardano’s native token, has surpassed stablecoin Tether to become the third largest cryptocurrency based on market cap.
According to cryptocurrency tracker CoinGecko, the ADA token now has a market cap of $64.9 billion (£47.2bn) compared to recently overtaken Tether which sits just shy at $64.6 bn (£46.9bn).
Perhaps more notably, the Cardano coin has a seven day growth rate of 20.8%, putting it leaps and bounds ahead of Tether’s 0.7% growth or top dog Bitcoin’s -0.6% decrease.
The renewal of optimism in the Cardano system comes as its developers – IOHK – plan to allow smart contract usage by September 12 this year.
Known as the ‘Goguen‘ era, this third stage in Cardano’s lifecycle would significantly upgrade the utility of the network, enabling it to rival Ethereum in terms of its decentralised finance offering.
While the more than 1,400% jump in ADA’s price in the past year does exceed both Bitcoin and Ether’s returns combined, the repeated pushbacks of Cardano’s smart contract update has left some skeptical for its future.
For example, Galaxy Digital LP CEO, Mike Novogratz, posted on Twitter on Sunday: “I spoke to 20 of the smartest people I know in the space, and zero of them saw Cardano having any traction” with developers.
Antoni Trenchev, managing partner and co-founder of crypto lender Nexo, said: “Most people outside crypto have never even heard of Cardano — yet here it is with a market cap, that tops many S&P 500 index constituents.”
Despite the skepticism, Cardano’s founder, Charles Hoskinson, has maintained the stance he gave in his interview with The Block that “if you have an enterprise with tens of millions of people involved, who are putting their money into it, building infrastructure, and using it for real-life utility… that’s not a bubble, that’s an economy”.
Along with ADA’s surge in value this week, the crypto market as a whole also topped $2 trillion for the first time in almost three months, leaving many hopeful for a maintained recovery.
Want to learn more from executives at the heart of this space? The Blockchain IoT Solutions Congress, on November 2 2021, will explore the convergence of these two technologies and the use cases and industries that will benefit.
