Cardano price outlook: What next for ADA after bulls break $0.4?

• Cardano price reached an intraday high of $0.42 on Thursday.
• The price of ADA token is up more than 63% in 2023 at current levels.
• On-chain metrics and other factors suggest ADA could continue higher, especially is wider sentiment remains positive.

ADA, the native token of the Cardano blockchain ecosystem, was flat around 4 pm ET on Thursday as the market appeared to cool off following a strong showing that started with Bitcoin’s greatest performance of 2023 so far.

While the Cardano price shows a sideways outlook, ADA bulls did have a great break when they pierced resistance at $0.40. Indeed, the cryptocurrency’s value rose as high as $0.42 on leading crypto exchanges. Cardano’s token is up roughly 16% over the past month, with current prices last seen in the first week of February.

What helped ADA prices get higher in recent weeks?

After a brutal 2022 for ADA, Cardano has had a great start in 2023. In fact, ADA/USD is 63% year-to-date at current levels above $0.40.

What then has helped the Cardano price to surge to today’s highs? Mostly, it’s been down to the bullish sentiment experienced across crypto so far in 2023 – even with the slight derailment seen earlier in the week amid a stablecoin crackdown.

However, talk of revisiting algorithmic stablecoins, including Cardano based DJED particularly buoyed ADA markets. 

Data also shows there has also been massive whale activity around ADA in the past two weeks.  On-chain metrics highlight average daily transactions above 1,700, while large investors (whales and sharks) continued to scoop ADA throughout the last three or so months.

As Santiment researchers noted recently, addresses with 10,000 to 10 million ADA had accumulated nearly 660 million tokens approximately worth $235 million since the price crash that followed the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange.

📊 #Cardano’s brutal 2022 is far from a distant memory, even with a nice +45% rally here in 2023. Our latest insight looks at the #onchain upside that is peeking, including a major rise in whale activity, trader losses that lessen future risk, and more. https://t.co/sZPBdzQYyf pic.twitter.com/SvK9Sx5HjS

– Santiment (@santimentfeed) February 14, 2023

Additionally, sentiment is this week more upbeat after Cardano developer Input Output HK announced a key upgrade to the network had successfully gone live. According to the firm, the SECP upgrade adds scalability, and enhances cross-chain interoperability. As such, Cardano now supports more cross-chain dApps.

Are these metrics good for Cardano price? Likely. Indeed ADA bull Dan Gambardello suggests ADA/USD has formed an inverse head & shoulders pattern and predicts the next target could be $0.65. 

Cardano. Inverse head & shoulders. .65 target.#Cardano $ADA pic.twitter.com/p6PA8JareX

– Dan Gambardello (@cryptorecruitr) February 16, 2023