Cardano’s ADA Leads Market Recovery Amid Range-Bound Trading

Cardano’s ADA is leading crypto gains as the wider market remains relatively subdued, with bitcoin continuing to trade inside its recent range.

ADA jumped 10% over the past 24 hours and gained 4% since midnight UTC, pushing above $0.27 and to its highest level since May, according to CoinDesk data. VVV, ENA and PEPE also recorded gains of around 5%.

Bitcoin rose 1% and ether added 0.5%, leaving the two largest cryptocurrencies well behind ADA’s advance. BTC remained stuck between $84,000 and $87,000.

The reason for ADA’s outperformance is not immediately apparent, although renewed attention around Cardano’s “RealFi” product may be helping sentiment. Announced Oct. 1, the initiative allows stablecoins to be directed into institutional credit markets with potential annual returns of up to 9%.

Investors may also be positioning for Cardano’s upcoming Dijkstra era. The first phase of the network’s next scalability and optimization stage is expected between late December 2026 and early 2027. Linear Leios and nested transactions are expected to be introduced as part of the rollout, with the goal of substantially increasing transaction throughput.

Dollar Strength Weighs on Risk Appetite

The U.S. Dollar Index climbed to 102.53 early Monday, its highest level since April 2025, extending its rebound from the Sept. 9 low of 98.60.

A stronger dollar is typically considered a negative backdrop for bitcoin and crypto, although the historical correlation between DXY and digital assets has been limited.

BTC Derivatives

Bitcoin open interest edged down to $22.0 billion from $22.4 billion on Friday. Funding rates remained elevated across exchanges, generally between 4% and 10% annualized, while the three-month annualized basis held around 5%-6%.

Positioning remains relatively resilient after Friday’s buildup, with leveraged longs largely staying open rather than being aggressively unwound.

Options traders continued to favor calls. The 24-hour put/call ratio stood at 87/13, while the one-week 25-delta skew moved to -7% from roughly 1.5%. The at-the-money term structure remained in contango, with the front end around 24%-25% and levels reaching roughly 39% by late 2027.

Coinglass reported $174 million in liquidations over 24 hours, including $74 million in BTC, $31 million in ETH and $13 million across other assets. Shorts accounted for 72% of total liquidations, compared with 28% for longs.

Binance’s liquidation heatmap identifies $87,150 as an important level should bitcoin attempt another move higher.

Token Moves

Sui (SUI) rose nearly 7% over 24 hours to around $1.85, leading major layer-1 tokens. The advance followed a technical breakout and increased anticipation surrounding the network’s upcoming Basecamp ecosystem event.

Ethena (ENA) fell nearly 9% to $0.24, making it one of the weakest performers among large-cap DeFi tokens. The decline came ahead of an early-October unlock involving 3.03 billion tokens.

Solana (SOL) and Uniswap (UNI) each declined 0.4%, trading near $121 and $9.06, while BNB remained almost flat around $788 as markets consolidated after recent inflation data.

Monad (MON) fell more than 4% over 24 hours to around $0.032. The decline came despite StraitsX announcing plans to issue native SGD and USD stablecoins on the network.

Zcash (ZEC) dropped 2% to approximately $1,330 as momentum in privacy-focused tokens cooled and traders shifted attention toward layer-1 performance and upcoming token unlocks.