Cardano slipped ahead of its Van Rossem hard fork as traders piled into short positions, even as large wallets kept buying ADA. The token now sits between two liquidity clusters that could decide its next move.
Cardano fell 1.39% to $0.1628 two days before the Van Rossem hard fork, as rising short bets outweighed whale demand. On July 16 ADA traded between an intraday low of $0.1611 and a high of $0.1664, extending a retreat from an early-July peak near $0.195.
Derivatives traders leaned bearish into the upgrade. CoinGlass data placed ADA's weighted funding rate at -0.0067%, meaning short holders were paying those betting on a rise. The long-to-short ratio stood at 0.58, while open interest rose 4% to $421 million as new leveraged positions came in.
Whales buy as futures traders bet against ADA
The heavy short positioning collided with steady accumulation from large holders. Wallets holding between 100,000 and 100 million ADA raised their balances to the highest level since 2023, which crypto.news described as possible positioning before Van Rossem goes live.
Cardano's governance approved the hard fork on July 13, according to Intersect, with activation set for July 18. Van Rossem is expected to lower execution costs, making transactions and applications cheaper to run, and to prepare the network for Leios, a later scaling upgrade meant to raise capacity before the end of 2026.
Liquidity clusters near $0.160 and $0.170
Momentum stayed soft even after the whale purchases. TradingView's Relative Strength Index stood at 46.92, below its moving average of 50.95, placing it on the bearish side of neutral without reaching oversold levels.
The setup leaves ADA wedged between two liquidity pools. CoinGlass's three-day heatmap showed the nearest dense cluster between $0.160 and $0.161, just below the market price, with a larger concentration around $0.170. A drop below $0.160 could trigger leveraged long liquidations and expose $0.1465, while a move through $0.170 could force short sellers to cover as the fork activates.
Source: crypto.news
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