Cardano (ADA) Just Broke Higher: The Data Says It Wasn’t Just Short Covering

ADA is among the top performers in the past week, surging by 10%. The native token of the Cardano blockchain has skyrocketed by almost 100% since its multi-year low of under $0.14, marked in late June as the FUD around the protocol spread like wildfire. The asset recently hit a multi-month peak of over $0.27, and data from Santiment showed that the move cannot be explained simply by short covering alone. New Positions Are Entering The crypto intelligence resource challenged the short-squeeze narrative after finding that ADA open interest actually increased about 25% over the same two-day period to over $300 million, during which the underlying asset jumped by 10% to over $0.27. The token marked its highest daily close since early April at that point. This increase was not simply a consequence of the asset’s higher dollar price, as even measured in ADA, the OI climbed by roughly 13%. This suggests that traders were adding new leveraged positions as the move progressed. Santiment also outlined 314 whale transactions worth over $100,000 on October 5, around 2.2 times the weekday average during the previous month. Nevertheless, short covering likely played some role, but not as signifi...