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- Cardano is up by close to 40 percent in the past week, but can it shoot up 25x and become the Apple of crypto? An analyst compares the two.
- While Apple was largely steering into a new market with their computers, smartphones and tech products, Cardano has Ethereum, Solana, Binance Smart Chain and more to contend with.
It’s been a great year for Cardano and its native ADA token has shot up to record heights as a result. ADA shot up this year to topple other major projects, notably XRP, Binance Coin and Tether to become the third-biggest cryptocurrency. But can the token realistically shoot up 25x and hit the market cap of tech behemoth Apple which currently stands at over $2.4 trillion. One analyst looks at what Cardano can learn from Apple’s rise to the top.
Cardano has positioned itself as one of the most serious in a group of blockchain projects now referred to as “Ethereum killers.” Together with the likes of Solana, Binance Smart Chain and Polkadot, it’s seen as one of the projects that could one day anchor Ethereum’s ‘babies’, including DeFi and NFTs.
ADA, on its part, has been doing excellently this year. In the past day, it has hit a new all-time high at $2.97. At press time, it’s trading at $2.81, and although it’s down by 0.7 percent in the past day, it’s up 34 percent in the past week.
But can Cardano hit 25x to rival Apple’s market cap? Trader, analyst and YouTuber Lark Davis thinks so. However, to do so, there are a number of things Cardano must focus on.
What Cardano must do to become the Apple of crypto
The debate on whether Cardano can dominate the cryptocurrencies market is a non-starter without smart contracts. As such, the upcoming Alonzo hard fork and smart contracts functionality are critical for Cardano.
But this is just the beginning, Davis believes. It must strive to catch up with its rivals. Currently, its metrics are less-than-appealing.
“Due to a lack of smart contracts, Cardano lacks market share on all the key metrics. Total value locked in defi 0, daily NFT sale volume tiny, daily transactions 82k, 2 million addresses total,” the analyst stated.
On the other hand, Cardano’s main rival Ethereum is thriving in these metrics. Ethereum has “TVL [of]114 billion, daily NFT over 100 million, daily transactions 1.2 million, 166 million addresses total. Plus first-mover advantage and near-universal acceptance of ETH and ETH standard tokens on exchanges and in defi.”
As if this isn’t uphill enough, Cardano also faces competition from several other ‘Ethereum killers.’ Binance Smart Chain, despite the attacks on its DeFi platforms, has come out swinging and attracted billions of dollars in DeFi. Solana, Terra, Avalanche, Polygon and Zilliqa are also fighting for a share of the pie.
However, becoming the Ethereum killer is just the beginning. At press time, Ethereum’s market cap is $386 billion, a sixth of Apple’s.
To rival Apple’s size, Cardano would have to see massive adoption globally. ADA wallets will have to hit close to a billion, Davis believes, a Herculean task given that this would require governments to accept cryptocurrencies, and as it stands, there’s a lot of resistance and skepticism.
Cardano will also need “usefulness, daily transactions total amount would need to be at least 5 million, and value transferred would probably need to hit 100 billion. Defi TVL [has to be]a trillion.”
But still, this is not all. One of the reasons Apple is so successful is that it builds products people can’t live without. As such, the users are willing to pay a premium for them. Etherum has this, to some extent. Users have been paying astronomical fees just to access the likes of Uniswap, Aave, OpenSea and Rarible.
