Cardano price prediction 2022
Up, down or sideways – what lies ahead for the price of Cardano?
We’re reader-supported and may be paid when you visit links to partner sites. We don’t compare all products in the market, but we’re working on it!
Launched in 2017, Cardano was designed to be an all-in-one cryptocurrency. Bitcoin, which uses the blockchain to let people send and receive tokens to each other, was the first generation of cryptocurrency.
You can think of Ethereum as the second generation. This unlocked the real potential of blockchain technology in the form of "smart contracts", which are programs designed to do things automatically on the blockchain.
Cardano might be the third generation and has the goal of overcoming the problems other currencies have encountered. It was specifically designed with the aim of offering fast and direct transfers as well as a platform for financial applications. Its goals are incredibly ambitious, but there are a lot of issues Cardano will need to overcome to achieve these goals.
Learn more Where to buy Cardano (ADA)
See our guide for a complete run-down of Cardano and its ADA cryptocurrency
Quick facts
| Coin name | Ada |
| Symbol | ADA |
| Algorithm type | Ouroboros proof of stake |
| Mineable | No |
| Launch date | September 29, 2017 |
Cardano (ADA) price prediction 2021
Cardano (ADA) is currently worth about US $1.30, but things are looking up as it gains momentum due to its eco-friendly image. By December 2021, Finder's panel of crypto experts gave an average predicted price for the coin of US $27.25.
However, this average is heavily impacted by one outlier. While the rest of the panel gave predictions of between US $0.50 and US $8 for ADA's value by the end of 2021, CEO of Unocoin Technologies Sathvik Vishwanath thinks the value of Stellar could hit US $400 at the end. It's a similar story with future predictions, with Vishwanath giving speculations of US $800 by December 2025 and US $1,100 by December 2030.
The median projection for the panel is one of more modest growth with valuations of US $2 for December 2021, US $4.01 for December 2025 and US $15.00 for December 2030.
Morpher CEO Martin Fröhler is one of the more bullish on the coin going forward, believing the coin could push Ethereum and thinks its value could go as high as US $8 by the end of 2021, hitting US $40 in 2025 and US $120 in 2030.
"Cardano is the only real Ethereum challenger. It is a well-designed protocol built on a strong scientific foundation," he said.
Banz Capital CEO John Iadeluca sees the value of the coin dipping in the short term to US $0.90 but thinks its strong proposition for blockchain developers will help its value going forward, giving year-end predictions for 2025 and 2030 of US $7.20 and US $40, respectively.
Comparing it to Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), he adds, "Cardano has a very strong proposition for blockchain developers of which will incentivize many of the industry's key talent to build the future on Cardano. While it still requires a large amount of progression in order to be a contender against the value of ETH or BTC, its future is nonetheless bright."
Senior lecturer at the University of Canberra John Hawkins sees Cardano's value tracking in the other direction, believing the coin's value will steadily decrease in value, falling from US $1 at the end of 2020, US $0.20 in 2025 and eventually nothing by the close of 2030.
"Despite technical differences, there seems to be high correlations between prices of different cryptocurrencies excluding stablecoins," Hawkins said.
Can ADA surpass ETH or BTC?
Cardano's image as an "eco-friendly" financial product along with its ability to process transactions much faster than Ethereum has led many to wonder whether Cardano could challenge industry leaders like ETH or BTC.
However, the bulk of our panel (61%) doesn't think ADA will be able to surpass ETH or BTC as one of the most widely transacted coins. But just over a tenth (11%) do think Cardano could overtake Bitcoin, with only 3% thinking it'll impact ETH.
Meet our panel
| Panelist | Panelist | Panelist | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sagi Bakshi, CEO, Coinmama | Kate Baucherel, Digital Strategist, Galia Digital | Sarah Bergstrand, COO, BitBull Capital | |
| Konstantin Boyko-Romanovsky, CEO & Founder, Allnodes | Jeremy Cheah, Associate Professor of Cryptofinance and Digital Investment, Nottingham Trent University | Justin Chuh, Senior Trader, Wave Financial | |
| Paul J. Ennis, Lecturer/Assistant Professor, University College Dublin | Pedro Febrero, Head of Blockchain, RealFevr | Josh Fraser, Founder, Origin Protocol | |
| Martin Fröhler, CEO, Morpher | Martin Gaspar, Research Analyst, CrossTower | Ryan Gorman, Co-founder, Trade The Chain | |
| James Harris, Director, CryptoCompare | Justin Hartzman, CEO, CoinSmart | John Hawkins, Senior lecturer, University of Canberra | |
| Julian Hosp, CEO, Cake DeFi | John Iadeluca, CEO, Banz Capital | Sukhi Jutla, COO, MarketOrders | |
| David Klinger, Founder, Coteries Corporation | Paul Levy, Senior Lecturer, Brighton Business School | Vetle Lunde, Analyst, Arcane Crypto | |
| Nicholas Mancini, Research Analyst, Trade The Chain | Desmond Marshall, MD, Rouge International & Rouge Ventures | Alex Mashinsky, CEO, Celsius Network | |
| Bobby Ong, Co-founder, CoinGecko | Daniel Polotsky, Founder/Chief Advisor, CoinFlip | Forrest Przybysz, Senior Cryptocurrency Investment Analyst, Token Metrics | |
| Joseph Raczynski, Technologist & Futurist, Thomson Reuters | Dr Iwa Salami, Senior Lecturer in FinTech Regulation, University of East London | Fred Schebesta, co-founder, Finder | |
| Xavier Segura, General Partner, Morgan Creek Digital | Avinash Shekhar, Co-CEO, ZebPay | Matthew Shillito, Lecturer in Law, University of Liverpool | |
| Ajay Shrestha, PhD Candidate, University of Saskatchewan | Lee Smales, Associate Professor of Finance, University of Western Australia | Elvira Sojli, Associate Professor, University of New South Wales | |
| Aleks Svetski, CEO, Amber | Simon Trimborn, Assistant Professor, City University of Hong Kong | Jean-Philippe Vergne, Associate Professor, UCL School of Management | |
| Sathvik Vishwanath, CEO, Unocoin Technologies Private Limited | Imran Yusof, FX/Crypto Market Strategist, Quantum Economics | Jonathan Zeppettini, International Operations Lead, Decred |
Where to buy ADA
Read our simple guide to buying Cardano (ADA) for more.
What's coming up in Cardano's road map?
With a saturated blockchain market, Cardano needs to ensure it remains competitive against other development blockchains, such as Ethereum. While many believe the blockchain deserves its market cap position, there are others that question if Cardano will live up to promises. The outcomes of development can heavily influence future prices.
Cardano communicates all future development plans through its roadmap. Within the roadmap, the blockchain separates each stage of evolution into 'eras'. In order, these eras include Byron, Shelley, Goguen, Basho and Voltaire. Each era increases the functionality of the Cardano blockchain and although being launched consecutively, are worked on in parallel.
The era of Byron saw the launch of the Cardano mainnet in 2017. The subsequent Shelley mainnet was then launched in 2020. The Shelley mainnet focused on increasing the decentralisation of the network. By increasing the number of nodes, the developers now claim that Cardano is 50-100 times more decentralised than comparable networks. At the time of writing, the blockchain is now focused on finishing its third development phase - Goguen.
Goguen
Goguen will focus on the integration of smart contract functionality, which has so far been lacking from Cardano's arsenal. Updates from Goguen have taken place from July 2020, and are expected to finish with the 'Alonzo' update in September 2021. Here are some key aspects that have been worked on over the last 12 months:
- Smart contract programming. Development of Plutus - a development and execution platform for programming smart contracts. Plutus will allow corporate financial business to take place on the blockchain.
- Non-technical programming language. Marlowe is a language used for the creation of financial smart contracts, but it is intended for those unfamiliar with programming languages.
- Plutusfest. A conference was held in Edinburgh to promote both the Plutus and Marlowe among the community.
- Udemy courses. Programming courses for both Plutus and Marlowe were launched on the learning platform Udemy.
- Development of virtual machines. Two virtual machines have been developed. The first is KEVM, which is a virtual machine that can convert programming language into a format readable by computers. The KEVM will be compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). The second virtual machine is called IELE and will focus on a higher-level programming language.
- Launch of programming ebook. Developers and the education team at Cardano have worked together to write an Amazon ebook.
The Goguen era will finally enable decentralised applications to begin developing on the blockchain. If the number of users on the blockchain increases, the demand for ADA should increase significantly.
Basho
After Goguen is complete in September 2021, the Cardano team will focus on implementing the fourth era - Basho. This next mainnet will focus on optimisation and scaling.
Once functionality exists, the team plans on improving the underlying architecture of the system so that it is able to handle higher transactional volume. To facilitate the higher volume Cardano side chains will be developed.
Cardano's competition
It's also important to be aware that Cardano isn't the only project being billed as a next-generation blockchain platform. As well as battling with established players in the crypto sphere, it will also face competition from other new projects. The following are some other currencies you may want to keep an eye on:
- Ethereum (ETH). The biggest smart contracts platform and the world's second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap at the time of writing (March 2018), Ethereum has the early mover advantage and a strong reputation. However, its efforts to overcome scalability problems in coming months will be watched with interest.
- EOS (EOS). A smart contracts platform that aims to be more scalable and easier to use than Ethereum, EOS offers an infrastructure for commercial-scale dapps.
- Lisk (LSK). Launched in 2016 and built in JavaScript, Lisk is a blockchain platform with the aim of making it as easy as possible for developers to create and deploy dapps.
- NEO (NEO). Originally known as AntShares, NEO is commonly referred to as China's answer to Ethereum. Developed as a platform for digital assets and smart contracts, NEO was one of the world's top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap at time of writing (March 2018).
- NEM (XEM). Released in 2015, NEM is a smart-asset blockchain built for businesses. It's backed by The NEM.io Foundation, a Singapore-based non-profit organization.
- Qtum (QTUM). A blockchain platform built for business, Qtum combines the security of bitcoin's blockchain with the ability to build dapps and smart contracts.
Beyond 2022: What does the future hold for Cardano?
Built on scientific philosophy and peer-reviewed academic research, Cardano offers a different approach to many of the other smart contract platforms. It's backed by a strong development team, has a clear timeline of goals and offers a host of benefits over the largest smart contracts platform, Ethereum.
However, it's still only in the early stages of development. While the Cardano team are currently working on launching its virtual machine, smart contracts capability and a host of other features, its competitors will also be getting their own houses in order. Most notably, Ethereum will be working on scaling solutions to improve transaction processing times, and the progress it makes in this area could have a big impact on the price of Cardano.
Bottom line
The bottom line with Cardano and its ADA cryptocurrency is that it's still very new. While it's a platform with plenty of promise and potential, that promise and potential is some way off from being fully realized. It's also far from the only exciting project with lofty goals, and predicting which platforms will achieve widespread adoption and which will struggle for relevance is extremely difficult.
With this in mind, the best advice is simply to do your own research. Find out everything you can about the fundamentals behind Cardano and what the project hopes to deliver. If you're optimistic about its chances of success and the potential for price gains, you can then think about buying some ADA.
Images: Shutterstock
At the time of writing, the author holds IOTA and XLM.
Disclaimer: Cryptocurrencies are speculative, complex and involve significant risks – they are highly
volatile and sensitive to secondary activity. Performance is unpredictable and past performance is no guarantee of
future performance. Consider your own circumstances, and obtain your own advice, before relying on this information.
You should also verify the nature of any product or service (including its legal status and relevant regulatory
requirements) and consult the relevant Regulators' websites before making any decision. Finder, or the author, may
have holdings in the cryptocurrencies discussed.
More guides on Finder
-
Ethereum price plummets as crypto industry’s combined market cap drops by 10% within hours
With the total market cap of the crypto sector dropping by a whopping 10% within the last few hours, it seems as though the coming few days could be highly volatile for ETH.
-
Back to school laptops: Buying guide
What are the things to watch out for when buying your child's first laptop?
-
Bitcoin price dips below key level as Russia prepares for a blanket crypto ban
As Russia gets ready to outlaw its local crypto market, BTC could be faced with even greater volatility in the near future.
-
How to watch UFC 270 Ngannou vs Gane online and start time in Australia
Heavyweight stars Fancis Ngannou and Cyril Gane headline UFC 270.
-
Why has the Rio Tinto share price dropped today?
Shares in Rio Tinto have climbed more than 15% in the last month.
-
Today’s ASX top stocks: Stanmore Coal (SMR ↑5.2%), Kelly Partners Group Holdings (KPG ↑3.3%)
Here are the 10 biggest movers on the ASX for Friday 21 January 2022.
-
Beauty Product of the Week: Gisou Honey Infused Leave-In Conditioner
This leave-in conditioner transformed my unwashed mop into silky locks that would make Rapunzel envious.
-
Samsung confirms Galaxy S22 Ultra will be a Note phone
Samsung's next flagship S22 phone will be, in its own less than subtle phrasing, "noteworthy".
-
Top 10 TV shows in Australia this week and where to watch them
A fun superhero series, an epic sci-fi and a dark teen drama are among our top picks this week.
Ask an Expert
