Cardano (ADA) Surged 48 Percent in Seven Days – Here’s Why

Cardano (ADA) has literally been on fire for the past few days, to the extent it has surpassed Tether (USDT) by market capitalization. At the moment, ADA is currently the fourth-largest cryptocurrency, with a market price above $2. The uptick in ADA comes after the founder Charles Hoskinson spelled hopes of an imminent smart contract update to the network. 

Cardano Briefly Flipped Tether, Binance Coin

The price of Cardano returned to the $2 level today, and it’s currently trading at $2.03, which means ADA is only 17.48 percent away from reaching the all-time high of $2.46, according to CoinMarketCap. Amid the uptick, the cryptocurrency briefly surpassed Binance Coin (BNB) and Tether (USDT) to the third-largest position. 

BNB has reclaimed third place at the moment with a market cap of $67.98 billion, while Cardano sees around $65.01 billion as the fourth-largest cryptocurrency. Percentage-wise, however, Cardano has gained more over the past seven and thirty days (48%, 62%) than BNB (20%, 33%). 

More than $58 billion has been transacted with Cardano coin over the past 30 days, per CoinMarketCap.

What’s Behind the Rise of Cardano

Cardano began surging notably following a disclosure by the founder that the date for the deployment of the long-awaited Alonzo hardfork will be revealed today, being August 13. 

We’ll be able to announce when the alonzo hard fork is going to happen, and at that point you’ll be able to run smart contracts on Cardano.

Charles Hoskinson 

Alonzo is a crucial update to the Cardano mainnet. Upon successful deployment, developers will be able to build projects and execute smart contracts on the blockchain. Of course, this would make Cardano a big competitor to Ethereum, which has been the ground network for most DeFi projects.