Cardano Pain Remains High But ADA May Have Bottomed: Santiment

The once-touted “Ethereum killer” is in extreme pain, wallowing in the depths of a bear market, but a bottom may be finally forming, say analysts.

Cardano is showing classic bottom indicators with active wallets down 43% on their investments over the past year, and ADA dropping over 70% since September, said Santiment on Tuesday.

However, this extreme negative MVRV value (market value to realized value ratio) is generally an indicator of ADA being in an “opportunity” or “buy zone,” they added.

“In a zero-sum game, when average returns are severely negative, this is an indication of a looming turnaround with coins always averaging 0% on MVRV’s across any timeframe,” they said before adding:

“So when other traders are in severe pain, key stakeholders and professional traders are intrigued by this due to the lowered risk of buying or adding on to their positions.”

Cardano Sentiment Crushed

Adding to this pain, Cardano’s Binance funding rate is showing its highest short-to-long ratio since June 2023, meaning traders are heavily betting on further declines.

“This historically is another bottom signal,” they said, explaining that funding rates are always prone to liquidate and “send prices in the direction that traders are expecting the least.”

ADA was once a top ten crypto, but has now fallen to 13th place, below WhiteBIT Coin (WBT) and only just above Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

ADA prices have gained 2.5% over the past 24 hours to reach $0.26, but the asset is down almost 92% from its 2021 all-time high of $3.09 and failed to get anywhere near it in the 2025 crypto market peak.

📉 Average wallets that have been active on the Cardano network over the past year are netting a return of -43% on their investments. Memes aside about the altcoin’s major -71% price decline since September, this extreme negative MVRV value is generally an indicator of $ADA being… pic.twitter.com/LzQRKhobQe

— Santiment (@santimentfeed) March 24, 2026

You may also like:

There was very little discussion or chatter about Cardano on crypto social media, but it is not the only altcoin in pain.

Other Altcoins in Severe Pain

Solana is down almost 70% from its memecoin-driven all-time high in January 2025, with SOL prices hovering around $90 at the time of writing.

Speaking of memecoins, Dogecoin (DOGE) was down 87% from its peak price five years ago, and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is down a similar amount.

Chainlink (LINK), the once-touted standard for real-world asset tokenization, has not seen any momentum from this narrative, wallowing 83% down from its 2021 all-time high.

Not all altcoins were deep in bear markets, though, with Tron (TRX), Hyperliquid (HYPE), and Leo (LEO) faring much better.