Cardano’s ADA has emerged as one of the strongest performers in the crypto market, gaining sharply even as bitcoin and other major assets remain trapped within relatively narrow ranges.
ADA rose 10% over the past 24 hours and was up 4% since midnight UTC, trading above $0.27. The move pushed the token to its highest level since May, according to CoinDesk data. VVV, ENA and PEPE were also among the smaller tokens posting gains of about 5%.
Bitcoin (BTC) advanced just 1%, while ether (ETH) added 0.5%. BTC continues to trade within the $84,000-$87,000 range that has contained its recent price action.
There is no single clear explanation for ADA’s outperformance, but renewed attention around Cardano’s “RealFi” initiative could be contributing to the move. Announced Oct. 1, the product enables users to allocate stablecoins toward institutional credit and potentially earn annual yields of as much as 9%.
Anticipation around Cardano’s next network development phase may also be supporting demand. The Dijkstra era is scheduled to enter Phase 1 between late December 2026 and early 2027. The rollout will introduce Linear Leios and nested transactions, which are intended to substantially improve transaction throughput.
Dollar Gains Add to Market Pressure
The U.S. Dollar Index climbed to 102.53 early Monday, its strongest level since April 2025. The advance extends the DXY’s rebound from 98.60 on Sept. 9.
A stronger dollar is generally considered unfavorable for bitcoin and crypto, although historical price relationships show that the correlation between the two markets is limited.
Bitcoin Derivatives
BTC open interest declined slightly to $22.0 billion from $22.4 billion on Friday. Funding rates remained elevated, ranging broadly from 4% to 10% annualized across venues, while the three-month annualized basis stayed between 5% and 6%.
Leverage has largely remained in place following Friday’s increase in positioning, with long positions showing limited signs of a broad unwind.
Options markets continued to favor calls. The 24-hour put/call ratio stood at 87/13, while the one-week 25-delta skew dropped to -7% from roughly 1.5%. The at-the-money term structure remained in contango, with implied volatility near 24%-25% at the front end and rising toward approximately 39% by late 2027.
Coinglass recorded $174 million in crypto liquidations over the previous 24 hours. Shorts accounted for 72% of the total, compared with 28% for longs. BTC represented $74 million of liquidations, ETH $31 million and other assets $13 million.
Binance’s liquidation heatmap identifies $87,150 as a key level to monitor should bitcoin resume its climb.
Other Token Moves
Sui (SUI) gained nearly 7% over 24 hours to about $1.85, outperforming other major layer-1 tokens. The advance followed a technical breakout and rising anticipation around the upcoming Basecamp ecosystem event.
Ethena (ENA) fell nearly 9% to $0.24, making it one of the largest-cap DeFi tokens with the steepest losses. Traders appeared to be reducing exposure ahead of a 3.03 billion-token unlock expected in early October.
Solana (SOL) and Uniswap (UNI) each slipped about 0.4%, trading near $121 and $9.06. BNB was almost unchanged at approximately $788 as crypto markets continued to consolidate following recent inflation-related macro data.
Monad (MON) dropped more than 4% over 24 hours to around $0.032 despite StraitsX announcing plans to launch native SGD and USD stablecoins on the network. Broader market weakness overshadowed the development.
Zcash (ZEC) also declined, falling 2% to approximately $1,330 as enthusiasm around privacy-focused tokens cooled and market attention shifted toward layer-1 assets and upcoming token unlocks.
