Is Cardano Moving Higher Today In Anticipation Of A Coming Wave Of DeFi, Smart Contract Use Cases?

Cardano ADA/USD traded 6.15% higher at $1.29 over 24 hours leading up to early Thursday morning.

What’s Moving? The Ethereum ETH/USD-rival has increased 4.8% over a seven-day period. 

Against ETH, ADA has gained 2.8% over 24 hours, while against Bitcoin BTC/USD, it gained 3.8%.

In the last 30 days, ADA has appreciated 5.9%, while over a 90-day period, it has declined 30.5%.

Since the year began, ADA has dropped 6.8%. The coin touched an all-time high of $3.10 in September. At press time, ADA traded 57.7% below that level.

See Also: How To Buy Cardano (ADA)

Why Is It Moving? ADA moved in tandem with other major coins at press time as the global cryptocurrency market cap rose 3% to $2.1 trillion. 

ADA was the last among the 10 most mentioned coins on Twitter. It attracted 2,165 tweets at press time, according to Cointrendz data.

The top three most mentioned coins were Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. They attracted 11,273, 4,685, and 4,216 tweets, respectively. 

Cardano was the second top-trending ticker on Stocktwits at press time, signifying high interest from retail traders.

Plutus, the smart contract platform for Cardano, is now deployed. Input Output — the company associated with Cardano — tweeted that the next phase for Plutus is optimization and scaling. 

With core #Plutus capability now deployed, the next phase is optimization & scaling. Starting with parameter changes like block size & memory units, we’ll steadily & securely start to increase bandwidth & throughput
More from #Cardano architect John Woodshttps://t.co/8BUuQQauHy pic.twitter.com/YcWEIlGlCW

— Input Output (@InputOutputHK) January 12, 2022

Director of Cardano Architecture John Woods said in a video Tweeted by Input Output, “Plutus brings Decentralized Finance (DeFi) to Cardano. Plutus allows us to do smart contracts on the Cardano platform.”

“We’re going to start seeing decentralized exchanges and other DeFi apps launch on Cardano,” as per Woods.

Meanwhile, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson held an ask me anything session on Twitter at press time. 

Hoskinson touched on a myriad of topics ranging from Plutus to blockchain in Africa. Hoskinson came down heavily on so-called venture capitalist-based coins and individuals he described as Ethereum maximalists.

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