Cardano (ADA) Price Drops 5% Amid Trader Shorts, Hoskinson Blames Community for DeFi Struggles

Cardano (ADA) continued its downward slide on Monday, falling over 5% to trade around $0.57, extending last week’s 10% decline.

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Market data from CoinGlass shows trader sentiment turning increasingly bearish, with ADA’s long-to-short ratio at 0.75, the lowest this month. The metric indicates that more traders are betting on further declines.

On-chain data mirrors this negative outlook. According to Santiment, daily active addresses on the Cardano network dropped from 32,115 in mid-October to 24,280 on November 3, signaling reduced demand and declining engagement.

Technical indicators also reflect weakness. ADA’s RSI sits at 32, deep in bearish territory, while the MACD histogram shows fading bullish momentum. Analysts warn that a sustained move below $0.55 could open the door to deeper corrections toward the $0.49 support zone.

As prices decline, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has reignited debate over the network’s DeFi performance.

In his latest podcast, Hoskinson criticized the ADA community for its limited participation in decentralized finance platforms, asserting that Cardano’s total value locked (TVL) could easily reach $5–10 billion if users embraced native DeFi protocols.

He stated, “It’s not a technology problem. It’s a problem of governance, coordination, and accountability.” Despite over 1.3 million ADA holders staking on the network, few engage with DeFi apps, leading to stagnation.

Current TVL stands at $271 million, far behind Ethereum’s $85 billion and Solana’s $11 billion. Hoskinson argued that without community adoption, attracting users from other ecosystems would remain difficult.

Despite its sluggish DeFi performance, Cardano remains one of the most active blockchains by development activity, outperforming Ethereum and Solana in late October, per Santiment data.

Projects like Midnight and RealFi aim to link Cardano with Bitcoin liquidity and real-world lending markets, potentially unlocking billions in capital inflows.

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Meanwhile, large investors appear to be quietly accumulating. Recent data shows over 37.5 million ADA moved from Coinbase to private wallets, a sign of long-term confidence. Combined with steady token outflows from exchanges, this accumulation phase could lay the groundwork for a future recovery.

As Hoskinson puts it, “We can pretty much do anything, the question is, can we do it together?”

Cover image from ChatGPT, ADAUSD chart from Tradingview