Cardano's ADA leads gains in narrow range-bound market

By CoinDesk

Cardano's ADA token is trading decisively positive in a market where majors are up slightly but still locked in recent, familiar price ranges.

The token has gained 10% in the past 24 hours with prices up 4% since midnight UTC hours, trading at over 27 cents, its highest level since May, according to CoinDesk data. Other relatively smaller tokens, such as VVV, ENA, and PEPE, are up 5% in 24 hours. Meanwhile, market leaders bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) are up just 1% and 0.5%, respectively. Bitcoin, in particular, remains stuck in its recent $84,000 to $87,000 price range.

The exact reason for ADA's outperformance is hard to pin down, but a "RealFi" momentum backdrop might explain the bullish sentiment. The product, announced on Oct. 1, allows users to route stablecoins into institutional credit for up to 9% annual yields.

In addition, the network's next major scalability and optimization phase, the Dijkstra era, might be pulling in capital. The update is due for its initial Phase 1 rollout between late December 2026 and early 2027, which will introduce Linear Leios and nested transactions to dramatically boost transaction throughput.

In traditional markets, the U.S. Dollar Index jumped to 102.53 early today, the highest since April 2025, extending its rise from the Sept. 9 low of 98.60. A sustained rise in the DXY is often seen as a headwind for bitcoin and crypto, although correlations suggest little link between the two assets.

Derivatives positioning

  • BTC open interest eased slightly to $22.0B (from $22.4B Friday), while funding rates stayed elevated and dispersed - broadly 4–10% annualized across venues. The 3-month annualized basis held in the 5-6% range across venues. Positioning is holding firm after Friday's build, with leveraged longs still in place rather than unwinding.
  • Options flow stayed heavily call-skewed, the 24-hour put/call ratio at 87/13 in favour of calls. The 1-week 25-delta skew flipped negative to -7% (from ~1.5%), and the ATM term structure remains in contango - front end ~24–25% rising to ~39% by late 2027.
  • Coinglass data shows $174M in 24 hour liquidations, with a 28-72 split between longs and shorts. BTC ($74M), ETH ($31M) and Others ($13M) were the leaders in terms of notional liquidations. Binance liquidation heatmap indicates $87,150 as a core liquidation level to monitor, in case of a price rise.

Token talk

  • Sui (SUI) outperformed major layer-1 altcoins, surging nearly 7% over 24 hours to trade near $1.85. The token led gains across high-throughput networks following a technical breakout and growing trader anticipation around its upcoming Basecamp ecosystem event.
  • Ethena (ENA) tumbled nearly 9% over 24 hours to $0.24, making it one of the day’s steepest decliners among large-cap DeFi protocols. Selling pressure intensified as market participants de-risked ahead of a massive 3.03 billion token unlock scheduled for early October.
  • Major market-cap tokens saw more muted price action, with Solana (SOL) and Uniswap (UNI) both sliding a modest 0.4% to trade near $121 and $9.06, respectively, while BNB held virtually flat around $788 as broader market trading consolidated following recent macro inflation data.
  • Monad (MON) bucked earlier optimism to fall over 4% over 24 hours, trading down to $0.032. The pullback came despite news that Singapore-based fintech StraitsX plans to issue native SGD and USD stablecoins on the network, as broader market head-winds overshadowed the integration milestone.
  • Zcash (ZEC) also gave back ground alongside cooling privacy-token momentum, falling 2.0% over 24 hours to $1,330, as traders shifted focus back toward layer-1 performance and upcoming token unlock events.

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