ADA, Cardano's native token, has recently seen increasing interest from institutional investors. That was the result of a report by the asset management company CoinShares. It also became clear that ADA overtook the top altcoins and bitcoin.
One reason for the increased demand is undoubtedly the imminent integration of smart contracts on the Cardano blockchain in mid-September. This upgrade also pushed ADA's price to over $ 2 last week just before the exact date was announced.
Investments in ADA outperform those of XRP, XLM, and DOT
CoinShares, a renowned digital asset manager, released a report on August 13, 2021, which found that institutional investors have recently become more interested in ADA than other top-rated altcoins, including Bitcoin.
A $ 1.3 million deposit into the native cryptocurrency of the Cardano blockchain has exceeded the funds invested in Ripple's XRP, Stellar Lumens XLM, and Polkatdots DOT.
This sum was collected within a week via hedge funds and other financial institutions. In the previous month, CoinShares was pleased about investments in Cardano amounting to 2.1 million US dollars. To date, investments in ADA of over $ 39 million have been made in 2021. There is a total of $ 47 million in ADA under the management of CoinShares.
The front runner in terms of outflows has so far been the original cryptocurrency Bitcoin. In the past week, $ 22 million has been withdrawn from CoinShares' BTC products. Last month it was even $ 54.9 million.
Looking at the competing altcoins in CoinShares' management portfolio, it can be said that they have nowhere near achieved the values ??that Cardano has. Only Ripple's XRP has comparable values. $ 1.1 million in the past 30 days and $ 46 million in the past month flowed into the token of Ripple Labs.
XLM and DOT, on the other hand, were able to book far less money for themselves. Institutional investors put in a little less than a third of Cardano's value, with $ 0.4 million in the past week.
Cardano is preparing for the introduction of smart contracts
At the same time as CoinShares' report was released, Tim Harrison, Director of Marketing and Communications at IOHK, announced the date for the much-anticipated Alonzo Hardfork. The migration to the mainnet should take place on September 12, 2021, and thus in less than a month.
The hard fork will be implemented on the testnet as early as September 1, 2021. This allows the development team to see how the upgrade is performing in the operating environment. With the upgrade, smart contracts are integrated into Cardano's blockchain.
As we move towards that hard fork, we will provide the Plutus functionality, a full toolbox with smart contract capabilities, and then we will start right from there. That gives us the foundation to build on Cardano ... We will have more and more dApps and other innovations coming out shortly afterward.
Nigel Hemsley reports that the engineering teams and test teams on the project are very focused as the Hard Fork Combinator Event is about to take place. In the meantime, numerous partners are working on their decentralized applications, which are written in the Plutus programming language.
The Cardano Foundation team is responsible for working with the various trading platforms. Most of the exchanges must be on board before the hard fork takes place. At least six crypto exchanges are currently preparing to support the long-awaited hard fork.
ADA continues towards the all-time high
In the course of the announcement for the Alonzo Hardfork, ADA started a small rally and jumped above the psychologically important mark of two US dollars for the first time since May on August 13, 2021. But the uptrend continued and ended 36 hours at just over $ 2.20.
Since then, the price has moved sideways, hovering between $ 2.05 and $ 2.20. But on the morning of August 18, Cardano's exchange rate fell back below $ 2. However, recovery came back quite quickly and ADA was trading at $ 2.08 at the time of writing, according to CoinGecko.
What looked like a serious attack on the previous all-time high of $ 2.46 after the exact date for the upgrade of the Cardano blockchain was announced, stopped just under 10 percent below. With the final conclusion of the purple phase, ADA will very likely start another attempt and mark a new all-time high.
Conclusion - more smart money for Cardano on the way to the hard fork
Institutional investors have invested more in Cardano and its native token, ADA, in the past week, according to a report by CoinShares. At the same time, the asset manager for digital assets was faced with horrific bitcoin and Ethereum outflows.
Other top altcoins, such as XRP, XLM and DOT, also couldn't keep up with ADA.
Cardano is currently on a real high. Almost a week ago, the community learned the final date for the implementation of the Alonzo hard fork and thus the integration of smart contracts on the Cardano blockchain. This was also reflected in the price for ADA.
If the upgrade goes smoothly, there is a high probability that more smart money will flow into Cardano. After all, Cardano has the largest proof-of-stake blockchain and the ability to execute smart contracts on it from September 12th makes it even more attractive.
