Cardano’s price continued to face pressure on Saturday, November 1, as founder Charles Hoskinson publicly responded to increasing criticism surrounding the blockchain’s ecosystem, stablecoin adoption, and DeFi growth.
Cardano slides amid market weakness
The ADA token fell to around $0.6100, marking a 40% decline from its August peak and a 53% drop from December highs. This means that an investor who placed $10,000 in ADA last December would now hold roughly $4,640.
The slump comes as market sentiment toward Cardano weakens. One prominent X (formerly Twitter) user, “BobbyJuice,” claimed the project was “on life support,” citing six major issues: lack of native stablecoins, low liquidity and total value locked (TVL), network congestion, weak on-chain adoption, minimal marketing presence, and limited interoperability.
Hoskinson defends Cardano’s progress
In a lengthy response, Hoskinson pushed back against the criticisms, arguing that most of the claims misrepresent Cardano’s fundamentals and future potential.
He rejected suggestions that adding stablecoins like Tether (USDT) or USD Coin (USDC) to the network would automatically boost ADA’s price or its DeFi ecosystem. Hoskinson also argued that the TVL metric does not accurately reflect the network’s overall health, as it excludes billions of dollars’ worth of ADA currently staked.
Regarding the claim that Cardano only has 19,000 daily active users, Hoskinson pointed out that this figure omits millions of users participating in staking activities, which are essential to the blockchain’s proof-of-stake mechanism.
Midnight sidechain and ecosystem upgrades
Hoskinson highlighted Midnight, Cardano’s privacy-focused sidechain, as a key component of its long-term strategy. Midnight is designed to support secure smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps) while enhancing interoperability across networks.
He revealed that Midnight has already secured over 80 partnerships, including collaborations with Brave, Alchemy, BitGo, and Anastasia Labs. Hoskinson expects that, once fully deployed, Midnight will significantly increase Cardano’s TVL, user activity, and stablecoin integration.
Supporters on X also defended Cardano’s progress, noting recent technical improvements such as the Ouroboros Phalanx upgrade—a new security enhancement aimed at strengthening network resilience.
ADA technical outlook
The daily chart shows ADA extending its decline from $1.0143 in August to around $0.60. The token has now formed a death cross pattern, where the 50-day and 200-day exponential moving averages (EMAs) have intersected—typically a bearish signal.
ADA also trades below both the Ichimoku cloud and the Supertrend indicator, reinforcing the negative outlook. Additionally, a bearish pennant pattern has formed, suggesting further downside momentum.
If the selling pressure continues, analysts expect ADA to test the next key support level at $0.5060, which marks the lowest price recorded in February and April 2024. A decisive drop below that level could lead to a deeper retracement of about 17.5% from current prices.
