Cardano Jumps as Shelley Hard Fork Release Date Is Confirmed

Share this article

One of the so-called “Ethereum killers,” Cardano has been posting significant gains over the last few hours after its creator announced when the protocol would finally transition to a proof-of-stake consensus algorithm.

Cardano Hard Fork Is Underway

Charles Hoskinson, CEO of IOHK, stole the spotlight after publicly revealing the official roadmap of the upcoming Shelley upgrade.

After the successful rollout of the incentivized testnet, the Ethereum co-founder said that the team has slated the hard fork for Jun. 30.

“Guys wanna know when Shelley is? Let’s tell ya… June 9 – this is when it opens up to everybody. The next date we have for you is June 16, that’s when we start putting things together end-to-end… If everything works without a hitch, June 30 we’re shipping Shelley,” said Hoskinson.

Following the announcement, market participants rushed to exchanges to get a piece of Cardano’s token, ADA.

The buying pressure helped propel the token’s price even higher, posting more than 16% gains in the last 21 hours.

ADA Shoots Up, No Major Resistance Ahead

From a technical perspective, ADA appears to have bounced off the lower boundary of an ascending parallel channel where it has been contained since the March market meltdown.

Since then, each time Cardano has risen to the upper boundary of this channel, it drops down to hit the lower boundary. From this point, it bounces back up again. This behavior is consistent with the characteristics of a channel.

Now that the altcoin has moved past the middle of the channel, a further increase in demand could see it rise towards mid-February’s high of $0.72 or even new yearly highs.

Such a bullish impulse is reasonable considering the price history over the past three months.

IntoTheBlock’s “Global In/Out of the Money” (GIOM) model adds credence to this optimistic outlook.

Currently, more than 81% of all Cardano addresses are “In the Money,” while nearly 14% are “Out of the Money.”

These figures indicate that the investor base behind ADA is confident about upwards price action in the future.

Looking at the GIOM cohorts shows that only 3,200 addresses are holding 1.6 billion ADA between the current price levels and $0.076. This can be considered a relatively weak area of resistance when taking into account the massive amount of support underneath it.

Indeed, roughly 37,000 addresses bought 7.85 billion ADA between $0.051 and $0.058. Such a significant supply barrier could absorb losses in the event of a correction preventing this altcoin from a steeper decline.

Demand for Cardano is expected to rise in proximity to the upcoming hard fork. Since the network will transition into a proof-of-stake algorithm, many may want to take advantage of the staking rewards that will soon be offered.

A word of warning, however. Cardano has notoriously delayed many of the network’s upgrades. It is important to remember that this event may serve as a “buy the rumor and sell the news” scheme.

Share this article