Cardano has become one of the top four cryptocurrencies by the market cap. Despite being a new coin founded in 2017, ADA has surpassed other popular tokens and is now competing for the top position with ETH. Recently, Cardano started smart contracts and hundreds of decentralized applications on its blockchain are underway. However, will Cardano reach $500 Billion by 2023?
Cardano’s performance during the year
A look at this year’s performance shows that Cardano (ADA, -4.62%) shoot up by over 1100%. It outperformed BTC and ETH who rose by 130% & 559% respectively during the same period. Today, Cardano has attained over $75 billion in its total market capitalization, making it the fourth-largest cryptocurrency in the market.
Cardano’s ADA token has fallen from this year’s high after another crypto coin knocked it off the third position back to the fourth. However, there is room for more significant gains for Cardano because it is still a new coin in the crypto market and significant improvements will impact its growth. With more DApps and funding to develop Cardano’s ecosystem, ADA tokens prices could go up. This will see more applicants migrating from BTC or ETH to Cardano blockchain, considering its low fees, security and scalability. At the same time, if you look at its peer’s market cap, for instance, Ethereum, whose market value tops over $500 Billion, reaching the new value by 2023 might seem impossible. However, it is more likely to get there, seeing it does not have to gain as much as it did this year. So let’s find out if it will reach there by 2023.
Limited availability of coins
ADA is Cardano’s internal cryptocurrency which facilitates investments on the blockchain network. In addition, investors use the coins for peer-to-peer transactions. Currently, Cardano has 33 Billion coins in circulation against the maximum ADA supply, defined at 45 Billion. The limited number of available coins could be a significant element when driving gains in the Cardano blockchain.
There is more to Cardano that make it an outstanding cryptocurrency. Earlier September this year, the blockchain network upgrade, Alonzo, allowed the execution of smart contracts. Smart contracts are self-executing with predetermined terms written into the code. Cardano is aiming at facilitating financial services and banking through its decentralized system. It will allow users to carry out activities such as storing documents that they could use to open a bank account. Besides financial, Cardano blockchain will allow users to store personal information and make it available to another individual or group when required.
The eco-friendly nature of Cardano and faster transactions are unique aspects that position ADA to continue outperforming other cryptocurrencies in the market. You see, due to its underlying architecture, mining Cardano is energy efficient, while mining BTC or ETH produces a lot of wasted energy. Besides, Cardano’s energy is renewable. Bitcoin is debated to consume more energy than the Netherlands within a year. Investors have created a stampede towards environmentally friendly coins, of which Cardano is the leading. In terms of transactions, Cardano allows about 250 transactions per second compared to 30 transactions per second on the ETH blockchain. Speed of transactions and less congestion will be a top consideration by investors and in favour of Cardano.
A roadmap to the future
As earlier stated, Cardano is still in its early stages of growth. It has mapped out five stages of development and developers have massive potential in these areas to make progress. Cardano’s ultimate goal is to become self-sustaining. With an autonomous system that is growing infinitely valuable each day, there is no way Cardano will not attain its goal.
However, change takes time and at some point, Cardano’s price might remain the same or steadily rise. Currently, price predictions show varying prices on how Cardano will perform. Some debate that it will trade at $10 by early 2022, while some maintain that Cardano’s price will range at $3.50 during the same period. If Cardano is to achieve the $500 BILLION market cap, it has to gain by 563% and above so that ADA price in the market to range from $15 and above.
Although it might seem impossible, Cardano has many opportunities that it can use to monetize its edge over other cryptocurrencies in the market. ADA has stronger fundamentals than its competitors and a friendly programming language on its dual-layered system. If it creates a better ecosystem to host tokens and DApps, hitting the $500 billion value is not a huge leap.
