Cardano faces potential 40% drop as death cross looms

Cardano price has crashed by over 51% from its highest level in November last year, and technicals point to a further downside. 

Cardano (ADA) was trading at $0.646 on Sunday, bringing its market cap to over $22.7 billion. 

The recent decline is mostly in line with the performance of other cryptocurrencies. Its top comparable tokens, like Solana (SOL), Binance Coin (BNB), and Avalanche (AVAX), have all moved into a bear market.

Cardano navigates death cross

There is a risk that the ADA price will continue downward in the next few weeks as a death cross pattern nears. A death cross forms when the 200-day and 50-day Exponential Moving Averages cross each other while pointing downwards. 

In Cardano’s case, the spread between the two moving averages has narrowed in the past few months. The 200-day MA stands at $0.729, while the 50-day one is at $0.736. The spread stood at over 20% a few weeks ago.

A death cross often leads to a substantial decline over time. For example, the last time that Cardano price formed this pattern was in May last year, and the coin dropped by over 40%.

The opposite of a death cross is known as the golden cross. Cardano formed this cross in November last year, leading to a nearly 200% price surge. 

Worse, Cardano has also formed a descending channel comprising a series of higher lows and lower highs. It also formed a head-and-shoulders pattern, a popular bearish continuation sign. 

Therefore, if the death cross pattern forms fully, the coin will likely continue falling in the next few days. If this happens, the next potential target will be $0.515, its lowest level in February this year.

ADA faces major fundamental challenges

Cardano price faces some major fundamental challenges too. The most visible one is that its ecosystem dwarfs that of other blockchains. The total value locked in the network has dropped to $314 million. 

In contrast, other recently launched chains with much smaller market caps, like Berachain, Sonic, Sui, and Sei have much higher assets in their DeFi networks. Berachain has over $2.97 billion in assets, while Sui has $1.2 billion.

The same is true with Cardano’s stablecoin assets, a notable figure since all transactions in the blockchain industry are conducted in these tokens. Cardano has just $30 million in stablecoins compared to Berachain’s $1.3 billion and Sonic’s $576 million.

Further, some of the most anticipated Cardano catalysts have not happened. For example, its integration with BitcoinOS, which was announced in October last year, has not been launched. Also, it is unclear whether the much-anticipated meeting between Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson and a VIP happened and its outcomes. 

While a potential ADA ETF is a positive catalyst, the ongoing ETH ETF outflows indicate that investors are largely interested in spot Bitcoin funds alone.