Cardano Price Risks Fresh 15% Drop as Open Interest Shrinks

• Cardano price correction could extend another 15% before hitting a key support trendline at $0.34.
• Market sentiment weakened following the launch of Cardano’s Midnight Network sidechain.
• The open interest associated with the Cardano futures contract has plunged to $694 million, registering weak participation from market speculators.

ADA, the native cryptocurrency of the Cardano ecosystem, fell 3.58% during Friday’s market hours to trade at $0.41. The selling pressure aligns with broader market pullback as investors react to the Federal Reserve rate cut. Along with macroeconomic jitters, Cardano price faces additional pressure amid technical breakdown, token fallout, and lack of speculative force. Will ADA coins lose the $0.4 floor?

Cardano Under Pressure as NIGHT Token Collapse Spills Into ADA Market

Over the past three days, the Cardano price plunged from $0.482 to $0.409, accounting for a 15.5% loss. Consequently, the asset market cap dropped to $715.39 million. This follows the Federal Reserve’s latest rate cut, which shook the broader markets, with the first excitement quickly giving way to selling.

A large part of the drag is linked to the fresh debut of Midnight Network, Cardano’s privacy-centric sidechain. Its NIGHT token hit exchanges around December 9, 2025, with wild swings—spiking hard at first before crashing over 80% in spots. Many who received tokens via the massive airdrop began dumping their tokens in a hurry, causing NIGHT to fall to the $0.03-$0.05 range on most platforms.

That sort of post-launch dump has caused people to be more wary about anything linked to Cardano.

In addition, the open interest tied to the ADA futures shows a quick decline from $846.5 million to $694.2 million, according to Coinglass. This decline indicates that the derivative traders are getting liquidated or reducing their exposure to leverage contracts to brace for market volatility.

Historically, this behavior has lifted speculative force from the market, bolstering a sluggish or downward momentum in coin price.

Furthermore, the latest on-chain data shows that more Cardano (ADA) tokens are being added to the circulating supply, adding downward pressure on price.

Cardano Price Risks 15% Fall Before Major Support Test

In a three-day downfall, the Cardano price shows a V-top reversal from below the 20-day exponential moving average. This new, lower high formation indicates that the market participants continued to follow a sell-the-bounce sentiment in the market. The downfall, backed by increasing trading volume, accentuates the strong conviction from sellers to continue the ongoing correction. 

During the recent volatility, the momentum indicator RSI (Relative Strength Index) shows some higher swings above the 50% threshold, highlighting the buyers’ attempt to regain control. However, the continued lower high and lower low formation of ADA’s daily chart shows the attempt is futile, reinforcing the bearish trend.

With sustained selling, the Cardano price could plunge another 15% to test a long-coming support trendline at $0.34. Since June 2023, the ascending trendline has acted as a major accumulation zone for buyers to recoup their bullish momentum.

Thus, the potential retest of this support stands as a key pivot momentum for ADA coin, as previous reversals from it led to major rallies in price.

On the contrary, if the sellers breach the bottom trendline, the Cardano price could face major selling pressure in the mid-term.

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