Cardano And Solana Boom As Bitcoin Reach Again $50,000

The crypto market is experiencing stiff competition as other digital currencies push to topple Bitcoin

Last Updated September 16th 2021

5 Min Read

Key Points

Solana launched a degenerate Ape Academy that sold 10,000 pieces of cartoon ape digital pictures pushing the price of SOL higher.
Thanks to its attractive features, Cardano is getting widespread adoption in various industries including education, finance, pharmaceuticals, and farming among others.

As Bitcoin pushes past the $50,000 mark, the other cryptocurrencies seem to be following closely in its footsteps. Bitcoin’s movement has a significant effect on the whole cryptocurrency industry, but there are a few select coins that are making even more gains than Bitcoin.

Bitcoin has had a yearly gain of more than 300%, while there are some coins like Solana and Cardano that have recorded massive growths of 8,616% and 1,499% respectively.

The big question now remains why are these altcoins rising with such huge margins even though Bitcoin remains the most popular digital currency?

Solana Has Tripled

Solana (SOL) has more than tripled in just the last one month. This coin was developed in 2017 by Anatoly Yakovenko. Yakovenko was formerly a software engineer at Dropbox.

The aim of this project is to create scalable decentralized marketplaces and applications. This blockchain features an open infrastructure that is secure, fast, and censorship-resistant. These features make this protocol ideal for worldwide adoption and in multiple industries.

Currently, one token of SOL, the native currency on Solana’s protocol is trading at $156.32 on CoinMarketCap.

It has a total circulating supply of about 296.6 million tokens, giving it a market capitalization of approximately $46.6 billion placing it at number seven among the top digital coins by market cap.

Exactly a year ago, the same token was trading at about $2.9. It has since seen a tremendous growth of 5303%, far more than that of Bitcoin.

This growth did not come easy. Solana developers have been working hard to ensure that this currency gets its place not only in the cryptocurrency industry but in the conventional economy as well.

More enterprises, both small and large are now able to use Solana’s blockchain to execute their transactions. Thanks to its amazing properties, a lot of companies are now adopting this protocol as part of their system a factor that has significantly pushed up the price of its token.

Solana blockchain is able to execute smart contracts, just the same way as Ethereum can, but at a faster rate speed than the latter.

Through its delegated Proof-of-Stake, as well as its proof-of-history consensus mechanism, Solana’s protocol is proving more effective than that of many other smart contracts protocols including Ethereum.

Its protocol can now process 50,000 transactions per second, while Ethereum can barely manage even 50 transactions. The proof-of-history consensus mechanism enables higher scalability and enhances the usability of this protocol.

Users have to pay gas fees while developing applications on the Solana protocol just like on any other blockchain. However, Solana has significantly cut down taxes and fees making its blockchain attractive to a lot of users. It has led to Solana partnering with notable companies to create non-fungible tokens or NFTs that allow these companies to digitize art, music, and other products. Recently, it launched a degenerate Ape Academy that saw cartoon ape pictures turned into digital images that sold more than 10,000 pieces. These partnerships have helped push the price of SOL tokens by a huge margin.

Solana has also partnered with projects that involve USDC and USDT. These are the most popular stablecoins in the digital currency industry. Stable coins are those whose value is connected to that of the United States dollar making them less volatile.

It has in addition entered the DeFi (decentralized finance) market that cuts out financial institutions and other intermediaries to execute financial transactions on the blockchain. With all these use cases, you can only expect this token to continue growing. However, keep in mind there are competitors that are just as good.

Check Out: Investing In Solana Right Now Could Make You A Millionaire Retiree

Crypto asset investing is highly volatile and unregulated in some EU countries. No consumer protection. Tax on profits may apply.

Cardano Is Also On The Rise

A good example of such a competitor is Cardano. Just like Solana, this coin has also recorded massive growth in the last year, and especially in the past few months.

Even after the crypto industry has shaded millions of dollars in its bearish trend recently, this coin defied this trend and kept growing. So, what is enabling this coin to sustain its value, and keep pushing its price up?

As Bitcoin crossed the $50,000 mark this week, this coin was also in its wake pushing its ceiling.

ADA, the native currency that runs Cardano’s network is currently retailing at $2.52 according to CoinDesk, a cryptocurrency exchange platform. This token has had a 52 week low of $0.0761.

That means that the coin has grown by an impressive 3,211%. That is more than the growth of Bitcoin this year.

Cardano’s market capitalization currently stands at $80.7 billion, with a total circulating supply of just above 32 billion ADA tokens. This value has placed this coin at number three among the top ten largest cryptocurrencies by market cap metric.

It has not achieved this feat by a fluke, but by what it contributes to this industry.

Cardano presents its users with a superfast blockchain using the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. It is now the largest digital coin that is utilizing this mechanism.

This coin has similar features as those of Bitcoin but allows the execution of smart contracts on its blockchain, a feature absent in the Bitcoin blockchain, and its consensus mechanism is also friendlier to the environment than that of Bitcoin. It is not only friendlier but also allows for faster execution of transactions, hence making it more scalable.

Thanks to its attractive features, Cardano is getting widespread adoption in various industries including education, finance, pharmaceuticals, and farming among others. In the education sector, Cardano is already working with the Ethiopian government ministry of education to keep students’ records as they pursue their education. Farmers are also gearing to incorporate this blockchain to track their supplies while the pharmaceutical industry hopes to use the protocol to detect counterfeit drugs and prevent them from circulating in the market.

Cardano’s developers are still working on further upgrades to improve the functionality of the protocol. If it maintains the same trend, it could soon surpass Ethereum. Currently, it is sitting a close third behind Ethereum. There is a lot more to come in the future as these digital currencies maintain such competition.

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