Cardano is trading just above $0.1399 as bulls look to steady prices after a 6% drop
The price of Cardano against the US dollar has dropped by about 6% in the past 24 hours. As of writing, bulls have clawed back some of the losses incurred in the last trading session and are aiming for a push back to $0.1400.
Cardano’s latest price action is in contrast to the excitement witnessed in the days leading up to the launch of Shelley, the smart contract network’s proof-of-stake protocol.
Shelley launch
With Shelley going live, Cardano’s blockchain transformation into a decentralized staking platform is finally here.
As highlighted in an earlier post by the Cardano team, the Shelley protocol is going to revamp the network’s overall decentralization and staking mechanisms.
The hard fork means that the platform, touted as an ‘Ethereum killer’, is ready to welcome a significant number of projects for various blockchain use cases.
Token holders are now able to interact with staking pools registered on the chain, with the protocol allowing users to delegate their token holdings to the pools and earn rewards for participating in network governance.
There are about 485 staking pools registered on the network, with 515 more needed for the Cardano blockchain to reach consensus equilibrium.
Cardano price outlook
ADA/USD in recent days has registered a decent uptrend, with the price of the token surging to a 52-week high of $0.1537 earlier this month.
The upside, which at one point meant Cardano was the best performing crypto asset, saw ADA/USD break above major resistance at $0.13, $0.14 and $0.15.
However, buyers have run into stiff resistance over the past week, with a broader collapse within the altcoin market on the back of Bitcoin’s match to $11,000 seeing Cardano dip below $0.15.
The ADA/USD pair has further corrected below the $0.14 region, and might retest the $0.1350 support area if the breakdown sustains in the coming days. Below that, support is found at the $0.1300 area of the swing low of the 50% Fibonacci retracement level from a high of $0.1537 to a low of $0.1307.
The MACD on the daily chart has started to turn bullish, indicating an uptick in sentiment could push prices higher. On the upside, bulls face hurdles around $0.1420, $0.1480 and the 76.4% Fibonacci retracement level.
If the turnaround breaks these levels, ADA/USD may retest resistance at $0.1500, with a potential run to the previous high.