ADA has passed the $2 mark, becoming the third-largest cryptocurrency in the world ahead of its proposed smart contracts launch.
Cardano’s ADA has overtaken Tether to become the third-largest cryptocurrency in terms of market cap. The price of ADA currently sits at $2 with a market capitalization of $63.88 billion which marks a 12-week-high. Over the past 24-hours, the price has continued to surge and is up 12% at the time of writing. BTC ($871.61 billion) and ETH ($377.23 billion) make up the top two spots globally while Tether ($63.31 billion) and Binance Coin ($61.27 million) round out the top-five coins.
The rush on ADA has been attributed to the upcoming launch of Cardano’s smart contract feature. After Cardano’s founder Charles Hoskinson announced the upcoming debut of a smart contract feature, ADA prices surged 20% from $1.54 to $1.88 on August 11, a two-month high at the time. The spike to over $2 represents an uptick of around 100% from just a few weeks ago on July 20 when the price dipped to around $1.
Cardano launching smart contracts
In a video posted to IOHK’s YouTube channel, Cardano’s Marketing and Communications Director Tim Harrison spoke with the team’s Head of Delivery, Nigel Hemsley, about the ‘Alonzo’ smart contract rollout. When asked about the specific date of launch, Hemsley says that “we can have a complete smart contract release ready for people to use our full smart contract toolbox ready for the Alonzo hard fork and this is the date that we’re aiming at Monday, September 12th.” Hemsley added a hard fork of the test net that will occur on September 1st with the main net release following a week and a half of testing.
Harrison concluded the video by giving an additional two dates to be aware of. September 25 and 26 will be the Cardano Summit, a virtual world and real-world event with events in London, Miami, Berlin, Cape Town, Tokyo, New York, and Wyoming.
The long-awaited upgrade to Cardano is geared at helping them compete with Ethereum and try to go from the third-biggest crypto to the second. Ethereum currently supports the majority of DeFi apps including exchanges and lending protocols.
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