ADA Slips as Market Weakness and NIGHT Airdrop Drive Volatility
Cardano’s ADA token dropped roughly 3% in the past 24 hours, weighed down by broader crypto market weakness and post-airdrop selling tied to the launch of Midnight’s NIGHT token. ADA was recently trading near $0.72, after struggling to hold above the $0.740 support level.
The token experienced heightened volatility, swinging between a low of $0.734 and a high of $0.760 — a 3.47% intraday range, according to CoinDesk Research. ADA initially rallied to $0.760 amid elevated trading activity but quickly faced resistance, falling back to $0.735 on volumes exceeding 59 million units. It briefly recovered to $0.755 before sellers re-entered the market, pushing the token down to $0.739 by session close.
Market-wide weakness added pressure, with the CoinDesk 20 Index declining by 1.7%. Bitcoin showed a similar loss, falling to roughly $115,265.
The volatility followed the launch of the Glacier Drop, an airdrop by Cardano-affiliated Midnight, which distributed 2.62 billion NIGHT tokens to wallets linked to XRP — representing around 11% of the total supply. Future distributions are planned for holders of ETH, SOL, BNB, AVAX, BAT, and others.
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson said major financial institutions have shown interest in the Midnight chain, citing its potential for privacy-focused crypto transactions.
Separately, Input Output Global (IOG), the core development group behind Cardano, secured approval for a $71 million treasury proposal to fund ecosystem upgrades over the next year. The vote passed on-chain but has attracted community scrutiny over governance transparency and fund allocation.
