Cardano (ADA) on Fire: Surges Above $0.10 to Get Into Top 6, Up 206% in 2020

At 16:00 UTC on Friday (July 3), shortly after IOHK, the company developing the Cardano (ADA) protocol, announced a custody agreement with Coinbase, the price of the ADA token went over $0.10 for the first time since October 2018, thereby making ADA the sixth most valuable cryptoasset by market cap.

Yesterday, on day two of the two-day “Cardano Virtual Summit: Shelley Edition”, IOHK Co-Founder and CEO Charles Hoskinson announced that from Q4 of this year, Cardano blockchain users would be able to store their ADA holdings at Coinbase Custody “without losing the ability to delegate their stake.”

On Tuesday (June 30), IOHK announced that the Shelley upgrade had gone live on the mainnet:

OK so… today’s mission (s) accomplished. Shelley-complete node 1.14.2 now successfully deployed to the Cardano mainnet. Next stop… the #Cardano2020 #ShelleyEdition virtual summit. (P.S. Thanks to all our amazing #Cardano community pioneers who have brought us here @Cardano

— Input Output (@InputOutputHK) June 30, 2020

Hoskinson had this to say about his company’s agreement with Coinbase Custody, which “operates as a standalone, independently-capitalized business to Coinbase, Inc.”:

“With Cardano, we believe we can create a revolutionary solution which will be able to offer access to finance and investment to swathes of the population who have previously been shut out of the system.

“This custody agreement allows us to offer the same secure storage solutions that can be found in traditional finance to ada holders, without sacrificing what makes Proof of Stake blockchains special – being able to participate in the network.

“We look forward to this partnership with Coinbase, and to continuing to bring cryptocurrencies closer and closer to mainstream adoption.”

As for Sam McIngvale, Head of Product at Coinbase Custody, he said:

“We have been following the success of the Cardano incentivized testnet, with over a thousand registered stakepools during the testing period.

“We are pleased to have been selected as the custodian and we’re proud to be a full-service, regulated, comprehensively-insured, and 100% offline staking provider in crypto.

“The ability to successfully operate within a regulatory framework is essential for the long-term survival of cryptocurrencies.

“We are overseen by the same regulators, and held to similar capital requirements and audit requirements as a traditional financial custodian, which removes many of the perceived barriers to global acceptance of crypto.”

IOHK’s announcement was made just before 14:00 UTC on Friday (July 3). By 16:00 UTC, the ADA price had broken through the $0.10 resistance level for the first time since October 2018.

Currently (as of 07:34 UTC on July 4), Cardano’s token is trading at $0.1003 (up 6.94% in the past 24-hour period), which makes it the sixth most valuable cryptoasset by market cap:

So far in 2020, Cardano’s ADA has gone up over 206% vs. the dollar.