Cardano hodlers skyrocket as institutional and retail demand for ADA go through the roof

• Demand for Cardano has exceeded Bitcoin, the altcoin has become a favorite for US investors.
• Potential use cases and high return on investment are the top factors driving interest for Cardano.
• Meanwhile, smart contract functionality in the upcoming Alonzo hard fork is likely to increase demand further.

Cardano emerged as a favorite among American users on eToro. The number of ADA holders has increased despite a delay in the highly anticipated Alonzo hard fork. 

Institutional and retail demand for Cardano skyrocket

Institutional demand for Cardano has significantly increased over the past few months. Grayscale, a leader in digital currency investing, recently rebalanced its large-cap fund, which has offered 335.32% returns. 

The asset management firm purchased ADA using proceeds from the sale of existing fund components. Now, the fund component per share is 66.3% Bitcoin, 26.5% Ethereum, 4.3% Cardano, 1% Bitcoin Cash, 1% Litecoin, and 0.9% Chainlink. 

Likewise, retail investors in the US are becoming increasingly confident in Cardano’s potential. On eToro, ADA has replaced BTC by emerging as the most held cryptocurrency in the second quarter of 2021. 

The social trading platform noted a 51% increase in demand for Cardano compared to the previous quarter. 

Simon Peters, crypto market analyst at eToro said,

During Q2, Cardano provided a clearer roadmap for its upcoming Alonzo hard fork – currently in a testing phase. If successful, it will bring smart contract functionality by allowing the writing and deployment of smart contracts for the first time on the Cardano blockchain. This upgrade will be significant as it will enable developers to build projects on the network, helping Cardano to position itself as a real ‘competitor’ to the likes of Ethereum.

Peters mentioned that the upcoming Alonzo hard fork is driving investors’ optimism. A wide range of DeFi applications can be deployed on the Cardano Network when the smart contract functionality is enabled by the upcoming hard fork. 

Interestingly, Ethereum’s founder Vitalik Buterin seems impressed by the strides that IOHK is making to improve the utility of the Cardano protocol. 

Buterin said: 

There’s 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.