It's been brewing on the back burner for years, but now the Cardano cryptocurrency is on the verge of a breakout.
Cardano price predictions for 2021 range from a mere double all the way up to a stunning 2,526% gain.
But why now? After all, Cardano (ADA) is down 94% from its all-time high of $1.33 reached in January 2018. It currently trades at about $0.09.
Cardano, though, is no ordinary cryptocurrency. It's a long-term project that has taken a measured approach to building what may be the most technically advanced crypto of them all.
Weiss Ratings, in fact, ranks Cardano as the top coin in its Technology category - ahead of coins like Tezos (XTZ) and Ethereum (ETH).
Cardano's long journey is on the verge of a major milestone - the first of several that will come in quick succession. As the project proves its worth, it will draw greater adoption, which in turn will drive demand and higher prices for ADA.
Here's an overview of what makes Cardano such a compelling investment right now...
Cardano Is a "Third-Generation" Crypto
Cardano's development actually started in 2015, although the ICO (initial coin offering) wasn't held until 2017.
It was founded by Charles Hoskinson, who co-founded Ethereum. Hoskinson set out to create a "third generation" cryptocurrency. (This assumes Bitcoin was the first generation and Ethereum the second.)
But cryptocurrencies from Bitcoin on have been plagued by a number of issues, including scalability, security, and interoperability. Cardano's developers set out to learn from the mistakes of prior cryptos while adopting the ideas that made sense.
So Hoskinson started from scratch. He put together a team of top-notch developers. He chose to use a little-known programming language called Haskell that enforces rigorous discipline.
Cardano is all about preserving flexibility and finding the best way to do things. It uses a layered architecture to help make it more scalable and secure. It also uses a modular design, which will make it easier to upgrade.
The code is published and peer-reviewed; the team is doing valuable research. The group has published 77 research papers over the course of Cardano's development.
The long-term goal is to create a secure, robust network with broad abilities.
I have long admired this project, dubbing it crypto's "sleeping giant" back in 2018.
And while the work has been painstaking, the project is now starting to realize the fruits of its labors...
This Cryptocurrency Is Making Its Move
The biggest event is the current rollout of the "Shelley" upgrade. This will increase decentralization in Cardano's proof-of-stake system of securing its network.
Shelley is the first major upgrade in the Cardano roadmap. Anticipation of Shelley has pushed the Cardano price up as much as 66% since May 25. The pop lifted it from the No. 14 ranking on CoinMarketCap to No. 10.
But what few realize is that the Cardano team has been working on the remaining planned upgrades (named Goguen, Basho, and Voltaire) this whole time. This strategy of parallel development means Cardano can now make a vast amount of progress in a very short time.
"We kind of have this reputation of, with the peer review, we're so slow we never ship anything, but the reality is that all the things we've been working on for five years are just coming together all at once," Hoskinson told Messari's Ryan Selkis in a June 17 YouTube interview. "Now we're in a situation where we can ship things in a matter of weeks that normally would have taken months."
That means we could see big price increases as Cardano quickly reaches maturity over the next year or so.
That's why these Cardano forecasts are so sky-high...
The Top 5 Cardano Price Predictions for 2021 & 2025
We'll start with a prediction from the aforementioned Ryan Selkis, co-founder of the crypto news and data website Messari. He recently predicted on Twitter that Cardano would rise to No. 5 on CoinMarketCap in 2021.
That would require the ADA market cap - and hence the price - to double. That's a 100% gain.
The website Digitalcoinprice.com sees a slightly higher 2021 price: $0.2026, an increase of 144%.
An Italian crypto website, PrevisioniBitcoin.it, sees Cardano hitting $0.67 by July of next year (a gain of 695%) and $1 by December (a gain of 1,104%).
Another site, UsetheBitcoin.com, thinks ADA tokens will reach $1 by the beginning of 2021 - a much more aggressive call.
But far from the most aggressive. That distinction belongs to Prime XBT, which has forecast a Cardano price of $2.18 before the end of 2021. That's an eye-popping increase of 2,526% in a little over one year.
Holding your ADA past 2021 could yield even bigger gains. Prime XBT's Cardano price prediction for 2025 - just five years away - is $12 per token. Selling then would give you a monster gain of 14,358%!
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About the Author
David Zeiler, Associate Editor for Money Morning at Money Map Press, has been a journalist for more than 35 years, including 18 spent at The Baltimore Sun. He has worked as a writer, editor, and page designer at different times in his career. He's interviewed a number of well-known personalities - ranging from punk rock icon Joey Ramone to Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Wozniak.
Over the course of his journalistic career, Dave has covered many diverse subjects. Since arriving at Money Morning in 2011, he has focused primarily on technology. He's an expert on both Apple and cryptocurrencies. He started writing about Apple for The Sun in the mid-1990s, and had an Apple blog on The Sun's web site from 2007-2009. Dave's been writing about Bitcoin since 2011 - long before most people had even heard of it. He even mined it for a short time.
Dave has a BA in English and Mass Communications from Loyola University Maryland.