Cardano is one of the biggest cryptocurrencies, as it has secured a spot among the top 10 largest coins by market cap in recent years. But just how big can Cardano get in the future?
We’ll be exploring if Cardano can reach $100 by analyzing Cardano’s potential market capitalization, the project’s roadmap and adoption. We’ll provide more details a bit further down in the article, but the summary is that it is unlikely we’ll ever see Cardano hit $100.
Before we dig deeper into the topic of Cardano potentially reaching a $100 price tag, let’s learn more about the Cardano project and its origins.
What is Cardano?
Cardano is a project that is building a blockchain platform with support for smart contracts and an innovative Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism. Cardano doesn’t yet have all of the features envisioned in the project’s roadmap, as developers are gradually introducing new features to the platform only after rigorous testing is completed.
The Cardano project’s methodical approach to development, which implements peer review principles, is somewhat controversial in the crypto community.
On one hand, the project’s approach to development is seen positively since it minimizes the chances of bugs that could disrupt the network or even cause a loss of funds.
On the other hand, Cardano has also seen criticism for allegedly being too slow to introduce new features, which makes it difficult for the platform to keep up with the trends that emerge in the blockchain and crypto space.
The roots of the Cardano project date back to 2015, when it was founded by Charles Hoskinson. Hoskinson was already somewhat notable in the crypto community before founding Cardano, since he was also one of the co-founders of the Ethereum project. However, Hoskinson left the Ethereum project fairly soon to focus his efforts on Cardano.
In order to raise funds for development, Cardano held an initial offering in which it raised $62 million by selling their blockchain platform’s native asset, ADA.
One of the distinguishing features of the Cardano blockchain is its EUTXO (Extended Unspent Transaction Output Model) model, which is different from Ethereum and Ethereum-inspired smart contracts platforms. In addition, Cardano’s Plutus language for smart contracts is based on the Haskell programming language, which is known for its advantages when it comes to formal verification.
The actual Cardano network became available for public use when the Cardano mainnet was launched in 2017. However, this first iteration of Cardano had very limited functionality.
Since then, the Cardano blockchain has been enhanced with a slew of new features. Some of the most notable milestones were the introduction of staking (July 2020) and the launch of smart contracts functionality (September 2021).
These new features have brought Cardano closer in terms of features to other leading blockchains, and enabled developers to launch decentralized applications, custom tokens, NFTs and other products on Cardano.
So, how high can Cardano go?
Cardano’s all-time high price was reached in September of 2021 during the crypto bull market, when the price of ADA hit $3.10 and the Cardano market capitalization reached almost $95 billion. The question we’re interested in is whether Cardano can reach even higher in the future.
The first step to determining realistic price targets for Cardano is to consider the supply of ADA. The maximum amount of ADA that can exist is 45 billion coins. There’s currently around 35 billion ADA coins in circulation.
To make our calculations about what the market capitalization of Cardano would be given different Cardano (ADA) prices, we’ll use the estimated circulating supply of 35 billion ADA.
| ADA price | Cardano market cap |
|---|---|
| $5 | $175 billion |
| $10 | $350 billion |
| $20 | $700 billion |
| $50 | $1.75 trillion |
| $100 | $3.5 trillion |
As you can see, a $100 ADA price would imply a $3.5 trillion market capitalization for Cardano, which would be truly massive. In fact, the entire cryptocurrency market combined has never reached a market capitalization of $3.5 trillion, as its all-time high is currently $3 trillion.
At $3.5 trillion, Cardano would also be bigger than Apple, which is currently the world’s most valuable company and had a market cap of about $2.7 trillion.
Cardano is competing in the smart contracts space against Ethereum, which currently has a much larger base of both users and developers. The highest market cap valuation Ethereum has ever reached was $559 billion. Given that Cardano is not even close to surpassing Ethereum as the biggest platform for smart contracts, the $100 ADA price target seems practically impossible to imagine at the moment.
If Cardano were to reach the same market cap as Ethereum at its all-time high, the price of ADA would be $15.9. This could be an adequate price target if you are very optimistic about the future of Cardano and believe it could truly rival Ethereum.
What could help Cardano reach $100?
Cardano (ADA) investors are banking on developers successfully completing the Cardano roadmap, which would introduce all the necessary infrastructure for the Cardano ecosystem to thrive.
The development of the Cardano project is conceptually split into 5 phases which are called “eras”. Here’s a list of the planned Cardano roadmap phases and the focus area of each phase.
- Byron – Foundation
- Shelley – Decentralization
- Goguen – Smart contracts
- Basho – Scaling
- Voltaire – Governance
The Cardano project is currently in the Goguen phase, which is focused on smart contract capabilities. Therefore, most of the releases currently coming from Cardano are related to enhancing Cardano’s smart contracts functionality.
The upcoming phase of Cardano’s development roadmap holds great significance, as scalability stands out as the primary concern for smart contract blockchains in the present era.
The Cardano project aims to enhance scalability by introducing improvements at layer 1 and by offering layer 2 solutions that operate on the Cardano blockchain. Some measures to facilitate the scaling of Cardano’s layer 1 involve increasing block size and refining the Plutus smart contracts language.
Hydra, Cardano’s layer 2 solution, will utilize isomorphic state channels to establish a highly scalable platform, utilizing Cardano’s layer 1 as a secure settlement layer.
If Cardano’s future upgrades are implemented as planned, it will emerge as a robust blockchain capable of supporting widely utilized decentralized applications while ensuring swift transactions and low fees. This achievement could form the basis for the widespread adoption of Cardano, thereby fueling an increased demand for ADA and subsequently elevating its price.
Still, we need to keep in mind that the cryptocurrency markets are heavily based on speculation and technical improvements and fundamentals can often take a back seat to momentum, popularity and speculation.
For example, ADA reached as high as $1.32 in early 2018, when the Cardano blockchain had practically no utility. At the time of writing, when Cardano already has a functional staking system and live smart contracts, ADA is trading at $0.35.
ADA price prediction for 2023 and 2024
The Cardano price prediction by cryptocurrency market data aggregator CoinCodex is currently forecasting a bullish price prediction for Cardano. Based on current market conditions and technical analysis, the ADA price prediction is forecasting that the price of Cardano will gradually decline until January 2024, when the coin’s trend is expected to reverse.
The Cardano price forecast is currently signaling a strong rally in the first half of 2024, which would reach a peak at approximately $2.54, which would be below the current Cardano all-time high, but about 7x higher than the current price.
The bottom line — Cardano probably won’t ever reach $100, but it could still be a formidable competitor in the smart contracts space
Simply by considering what a $100 ADA price tag would mean for the market capitalization Cardano, we can say with high confidence that Cardano likely won’t ever reach $100. Given what we know about Cardano and how the platform has played out so far, a $3.5 trillion market capitalization seems completely out of reach.
However, this does not mean that Cardano doesn’t have a future. The platform is consistently receiving upgrades, which will help it compete in the smart contracts sector. If you’re highly optimistic about the long term future of Cardano, a feasible ADA price target would be $15.9, which would bring it to the same market capitalization as Ethereum had during its all-time high.
FAQs
It’s very unlikely that Cardano will reach $100. Given the circulating supply of ADA, the market cap of Cardano would be $3.5 trillion at an ADA price of $100. This would be higher than the all-time high market cap of the entire cryptocurrency market combined.
Cardano has a good chance to go up in the future if there is another bull run in the cryptocurrency market. The Cardano project is currently perfecting the platform’s smart contracts, and the next phase will be to improve the platform’s scalability. This will make it possible for the Cardano network to serve a large number of users if demand for blockchain usage increases.
No, Cardano most likely won’t ever reach $1,000. At a price of $1,000, the Cardano market cap would be $35 trillion, which would be bigger than the current top 10 biggest companies in the world combined.
About the Author: Dave N. Clarke
