Cardano has become a favourite among American users on eToro. Although the much anticipated Alonzo hard fork has been postponed, the number of ADA holders has increased.
Cardano Institutional and Retail Demand is Growing
Institutional demand for Cardano has increased significantly in recent months. Grayscale, a leading provider of digital currency investments, recently realigned its large-cap fund, which returned 335.32%.
The asset management company acquired ADA with the proceeds from the sale of components of the existing fund. Now the fund composition per share is 66.3% Bitcoin, 26.5% Ethereum, 4.3% Cardano, 1% Bitcoin Cash, 1% Litecoin and 0.9% Chainlink.
Private investors in the USA are also increasingly placing their trust in Cardano’s potential. On eToro, ADA replaced BTC as the most widely held cryptocurrency in the second quarter of 2021.
The social trading platform indicated that demand for Cardano was up 51% compared to the previous quarter.
According to Simon Peters, market analyst for cryptocurrencies at eToro,
Cardano presented a clearer roadmap in the second quarter for its upcoming Alonzo hard fork, which is currently in the test phase. If successful, it will enable the writing and provision of smart contracts on the Cardano blockchain for the first time, thereby providing smart contract functionality. This upgrade is significant as it allows developers to build projects on the network and helps Cardano position itself as a true “competitor” for companies like Ethereum.
Peters mentioned that the upcoming Alonzo hard fork is fueling investor optimism. If the upcoming hard fork enables smart contract functionality, a wide range of DeFi applications can be deployed on the Cardano network.
Interestingly, the founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, appears to be impressed with the advances IOHK has made to enhance the usefulness of the Cardano protocol.
Buterin said:
“There are definitely interesting ideas in there. I do think Cardano takes a bit of a different approach than Ethereum in that they really emphasize having these big academic proofs for everything, whereas Ethereum tends to be more okay with heuristic arguments. In part because [Ethereum is] just trying to do more faster. But there are definitely very interesting things that come out of IOHK Research.”
