Cardano Sheds 60% in 2025: Will ADA Rebound In 2026?

Crypto YouTuber and market commentator Zach Humphries is openly questioning whether Cardano can keep its blue-chip status as the market pivots into what he calls “the institutional era” of crypto in 2026. In a recent video, he highlights a stark datapoint: ADA is down more than 60% in 2025 so far, trading around $0.35 and flirting with a break below long-term support.

Humphries notes that Cardano, a top-10 cryptocurrency since 2017, is now at risk of losing that position. With a roughly $12 billion market cap, it is being pressured by Bitcoin Cash and Zcash, which he says are “right there” in the rankings. On the weekly chart, ADA has fallen from about $1.32 in November to the mid-$0.30s, below its 50‑week EMA and nearing a key support zone around $0.30, with $0.22 flagged as the next major level if selling continues.

Institutions Are Circling — But Mostly Not Around ADA

The video frames Cardano’s slump less as a broad market casualty and more as a project struggling to keep pace in a sharply more competitive environment.

Humphries points to several pressure points:

• Total value locked on Cardano has dropped to around $250 million, according to DeFi Llama — small compared with newer networks he names, such as Monad and Katana.
• Cardano has “no real market share,” he explained, in the rapidly expanding real‑world asset (RWA) tokenization sector, which he cites at roughly $40 billion in on-chain assets.
• Maajor issuers ignored ADA in the 2024–2025 altcoin ETF wave. Humphries notes that only Grayscale filed for a spot ADA ETF, while BlackRock, 21Shares, VanEck have stayed out.

He also mentions a sharp liquidation event on October 10, when nearly 2 million traders were wiped out across the market, with Cardano futures open interest dropping from about $1.95 billion to $646 million — a sign, in his view, that leverage has been flushed from the system.

Midnight, Upgrades and the “Good Side” of Institutions

Despite the drawdown, Humphries does not write Cardano (ADA) off. He highlights three potential upside catalysts for 2026:

• The planned Q1 mainnet launch of Midnight, a privacy-focused network in the Cardano ecosystem built around zero‑knowledge proofs. Its associated token has already held a market cap above $1.3 billion, he notes.
• A coming protocol upgrade that aims to introduce parallel block processing, pitched as a way to make Cardano “one of the fastest-growing chains” by significantly improving throughput.
• The anticipated launch of Grayscale’s ADA ETF, which could, if it gains traction, provide a regulated on-ramp for institutions.

What he sees as the decisive variable, though, is institutional appetite. “If Cardano wants to survive, it’s going to have to get to the good side of the institutions,” he says, arguing that top chains that fail to attract institutional flows risk “losing their luster” in the next cycle.

Humphries discloses that he no longer holds a large ADA position, preferring exposure through SNEC, a Cardano-based meme token he views as higher beta if ADA recovers. He leaves the question of 2026 open, asking his audience whether they’re “concerned about Cardano heading into 2026” and stressing that, for now, the chart still suggests “more short-term pain” before any potential rebound.

For investors, the message is blunt: Cardano’s future relevance may depend less on retail narratives and more on whether it can convert upcoming technical milestones into real adoption — and, crucially, whether large institutions decide ADA is worth backing in the new phase of the market.

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