Cardano: Why are a Majority of ADA Holders at a Loss?

Paigambar Mohan Raj
Source: Pexels

Cardano (ADA) has had a rough week. Since Monday, the price has dropped 11.4%, putting more holders in the negative. More importantly, ADA is now 64.7% below its all-time high of $3.09 set on September 2, 2021,  and is in danger of sliding below a dollar in the next few days if the downturn continues. 

As the price of Cardano (ADA) falls towards the crucial $1 mark, more and more investors are finding themselves with unrealized losses as a result of holding on to the digital asset. 

More than two-thirds of ADA holders, or 67%, are underwater, according to IntoTheBlock. A quarter of Cardano investors are profiting, while 9% are on the verge of breaking even. To bring a better perspective, 3.41 million Cardano (ADA) addresses are in losses compared to only 1.25 million that are in profits.

Source: IntoTheBlock

The great majority of ADA holders (76%) have held their tokens for between one and twelve months. Only 11% of Cardano investors have kept the token for more than a year, and those are the ones that are still profitable. It could be speculated that HODLing is a way into the greens, but in the case of ADA, the wait has been long and frustrating for their holders. 

Why is Cardano slipping? 

Although Cardano (ADA) has a record number of wallet holders at the present, it still does not justify the lack of functionality on the project. Cardano has failed to release timely updates. The team has lost a lot of faith from the community about their promises. Functionality is something that the ADA team preaches but has failed to put into practice. 

The price drop could be attributed to the network failing to meet the lofty expectations that surrounded the debut of smart contracts. Cardano is still far behind in terms of decentralized applications (DApps), with DeFi Llama noting that there are just ten DeFi protocols running on the network, with a total value locked of roughly $233 million. 

Many Cardano dApps, according to Cardano co-founder Charles Hoskinson, are waiting for the Vasil hard fork to begin in June. The Cardano upgrade roadmap’s “Basho” phase will focus on scalability and smart contracts, using new technology dubbed Hydra to enhance network throughput even more.

At the time of publication, ADA was trading at $1.09.