Why Investors Should be Paying Attention to Cardano in 2019

As we are now in 2019, many (myself included) are hoping we’ve reached the end of the crypto winter that was 2018. With the hope that we’ve found a bottom in the current market, the goal is to choose a few projects with the potential to experience significant upside over the next year.

One such project is Cardano (ticker: ADA), which is currently ranked as #11 in terms of market capitalization. This is much larger than the coins we normally talk about, but size doesn’t dictate how much upside is available.

The Basics of Cardano

At its very core, Cardano is a competitor to Ethereum. It’s a smart contract platform that has used a different, more flexible approach to building the layering architecture. As a result, there is a strong balance between meeting regulations and also applying the privacy and decentralization principles that are so key to blockchain technology.

Started by Charles Hoskinson, one of the co-founders of Ethereum, Cardano is unique in the level of scientific philosophy and peer-reviewed research that was integral in its conception. Having started the company in 2015, there have been many new ideas and research put forward as part of the roadmap for Cardano, which is what makes it so relevant from a scientific as well as business perspective.

Understanding the Mechanics

Cardano is composed of two layers: the settlement layer and the computation layer. The Cardano Settlement Layer (CSL) is the base layer of the platform that was meant to be an evolution from Bitcoin. It operates on a proof-of-stake consensus algorithm and manages the “balances” on the ledger.

The Cardano Computation Layer (CCL), however, contains all the details as to why a specific transaction may have occurred. Basically, this is where the smart contracts are, and by having them on separate layers, it is possible to innovate much more freely.

Cardano has a few lofty goals that make it an appealing long-term bet. First, they would like to produce an interoperable, multi-asset chain. There are many companies doing this, but Cardano seems to have a strong network effect already, which could make the difference. Additionally, the project aims to connect the operations of the physical world with a new decentralized framework. Once again, this is not a “new idea”, but the way Cardano is designed might make this actually possible.

Cardano is the most developed cryptocurrency of 2018. Read more

A Buying Opportunity

So is there a buy play on ADA? Based on the chart below, it seems to be moving sideways out of a down trend and it has broken the longer downtrend down through 880 satoshis and seems to be hovering around the 1,000 satoshi mark.

Some price predictions have Cardano hitting massive new milestones (as large $40 billion in 2019), although these must be taken with a grain of salt. It is likely we’ll see more investors “shaken out” before there is a legitimate reversal to the downtrend, but now is as good a time as any to take a small position and maybe add more if it breaks through some resistance levels. Cardano is available on Binance, and should be considered a long-term fundamental play.


Featured image courtesy of Shutterstock.