Cardano is one of the largest crypto projects in the market, but right now I still do not see enough to put ADA on my buy list.
This is not based on one bad week.
ADA has struggled to establish a convincing long-term recovery, its ecosystem usage remains far behind Ethereum and Solana, and price is once again trading close to $0.20.
Cardano is around $0.206 today. Earlier this month it traded above $0.28, which means a large part of that recovery has already disappeared. On October 22 alone, ADA fell almost 6%, and recent attempts to build momentum above the low-$0.20s have gone nowhere.
That fits the broader problem I have with ADA: I still need to see proof that demand is returning.
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The ADA Chart Still Does Not Convince Me
Cardano’s longer-term price structure remains difficult to defend.
In case you missed it, I talked about all this in my recent YouTube video:
The recovery has repeatedly produced lower highs, followed by new periods of weakness. Buyers have had several opportunities to change that pattern but have failed to establish a sustained daily uptrend.
That is especially disappointing when viewed against the previous cycle.
Ethereum, Solana and XRP all reached new record prices in 2025. Cardano did not come close to its old peak.
Even during ADA’s stronger 2026 rebounds, price remained a fraction of the roughly $3.10 record reached in 2021.
At approximately $0.206 today, ADA is still more than 90% below that old high.
I do not need Cardano to immediately return to $3 before becoming interested. But I would want to see a clear sequence of higher lows and higher highs, not another short rally followed by a return toward $0.20.
Cardano’s Usage Gap Is Hard to Ignore
The ADA price alone would not stop me buying an asset if the underlying network activity were strong enough.
This is where Cardano loses me at the moment.
Recent DeFiLlama data shows Cardano with roughly $58 million in tracked DeFi TVL. Ethereum has tens of billions locked in DeFi, and Solana has several billion. Cardano’s stablecoin market is also tiny by comparison, and its decentralized exchanges handle only a few million dollars of weekly volume.
Using the snapshot we examined for our Captain Altcoin video:
| Metric | Cardano | Solana | Ethereum |
|---|---|---|---|
| DeFi TVL | $57.9M | $5.69B | $48.18B |
| Stablecoin Supply | $69.2M | $15.49B | $142.47B |
| DEX Volume · 7 Days | $6.08M | $11.69B | $7.31B |
The comparison is extreme.
Solana’s TVL is roughly 98 times Cardano’s in that snapshot. Ethereum’s is more than 800 times larger.
The difference in decentralized trading is even harder to overlook. Cardano processed about $6 million of DEX volume over seven days, compared with billions on both Solana and Ethereum.
The latest numbers move around from day to day, but they do not change the basic picture. As of October 28, DeFiLlama still shows Cardano at only around $58 million in TVL and roughly $5.6-$5.7 million of seven-day DEX volume.
These Numbers Do Not Tell the Whole Cardano Story
There is an important caveat.
TVL and DEX volume are not perfect measurements of whether a blockchain is successful.
Cardano supporters can point to decentralization, staking, governance, research-driven development and upcoming scaling improvements. There are also active efforts to broaden the ecosystem, including the Dijkstra testnet and ongoing work around Leios.
So I would not call Cardano dead.
That would be too simplistic.
My issue is opportunity cost.
If I am deciding where to put capital in crypto, I have to compare ADA with networks that already have far deeper stablecoin liquidity, much larger DeFi markets and dramatically more trading activity.
A good technology roadmap is useful. I still want to see people actually using the network at scale.
What Would Make Me Reconsider ADA?
My view can change.
First, I would want the price chart to stop producing the same weak structure. ADA reclaiming the mid-$0.20s would help, but I would want a sustained series of higher highs and higher lows rather than another temporary bounce.
Second, I would want Cardano’s DeFi TVL and stablecoin liquidity to start moving materially higher.
Third, DEX activity needs to improve. Six million dollars of weekly decentralized trading is simply too small for a blockchain with Cardano’s name recognition and multi-billion-dollar market capitalization.
If those things start changing together, ADA becomes far more interesting.
Until then, I am not telling anyone to sell Cardano.
I am simply saying that, at roughly $0.20 and with the ecosystem metrics where they are today, I can find stronger setups elsewhere.
For me, Cardano still has something to prove.
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