• ADA, the native token of Cardano, established a new 2020 top on Wednesday.
• The eighth-largest cryptocurrency surged to $0.097 for the first time in 13 months.
• The latest gains came as a part of a broader uptrend that began in March 2020 but received an additional boost from Cardano’s network upgrade news.

Cardano is going to the moon before its top crypto competitor Bitcoin.

The blockchain platform’s native asset ADA reached its year-to-date high on Wednesday. As of 2300 UTC, the ADA/USD exchange rate topped at $0.097, its highest since June 2019. The latest gains further extended Cardano’s yearly growth to near 178 percent, according to data provided by Messari.

Cardano price chart showing its explosive upside move from the Wednesday trading session. Source: 

The token also performed exceptionally well against Bitcoin, the top cryptocurrency whose uptrend has paused in the last three weeks. The ADA/BTC exchange rate was up 7.49 percent on a 24-hour adjusted timeframe.

Fundamentals

The gains in ADA price came on the day Cardano kicked off its much-anticipated network upgrade. The project will transform from “Byron,” a federated blockchain to a much more decentralized and dynamic “Shelley.”

The Cardano team aims to become a key player in the emerging supply chain and decentralized finance sectors. Shelley expects to pave the way for the project to become a truly decentralized and scalable blockchain solution for the two industries.

Heard you guys wanted Shelley? how about that? — Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles)

Founder David Hoskinson updated that they have launched the first Shelley node on Cardano’s mainnet. He added that a full hard fork would take place at the end of July, followed by a full-staking launch on the new blockchain on August 18. The anticipation of a better product seems to be the driver of ADA’s incredible price surge on Wednesday. Traders visibly increased their upside positions in the cryptocurrency market, which may later lead to a short-term price correction on profit-taking sentiment.

Cardano Technical Setup

On Thursday, the Cardano price corrected lower by 2.5 percent. That may have been the beginning of a bearish correction that typically follows a wild upside move. Traders who went Long on ADA yesterday may want to liquidate their positions for short-term gains.

Cardano is showing signs of an interim downside correction. Source: 

It is impossible to predict how far the bearish correction would go. Nevertheless, there is an Ascending Trendline below that have capped Cardano’s downside attempts lately. It may act as a support level should the cryptocurrency’s pump result in an equally massive dump. Conversely, bulls may want to target its YTD top to break towards the next upside target near $0.103. Meanwhile, a move beyond the said level would further set traders’ eyes on $0.116 as their primary long target.