What is Cardano?

The ongoing buzz around cryptocurrencies has made a lot of people familiar with the likes of Bitcoin, Ethereum and Dogecoin, to name three of the biggest and most popular cryptocurrencies on the market. However, it is also notable that there are several newer tokens which have gained a lot of attention in the last year or so, with some of these having the potential to grow and deliver fantastic returns in the near future. One such cryptocurrency is Cardano, which hit its all-time price high in May 2021, and could be expected to grow even further in the future.

Of course, we must first understand what Cardano is and why it has been so popular. Cardano is a public decentralized blockchain and cryptocurrency project that is reportedly the first crypto project to be derived out of a scientific approach and a research-driven methodology. ADA is the native token for the Cardano platform, and thus when people talk about the price of Cardano, it is ADA that they are referring to. The recent surge in ADA’s price is thought to be linked to the fact that it is one of the most sustainable and energy efficient cryptocurrencies on the market. This is one of the biggest concerns around the crypto market at present, as seen by Tesla’s announcement that it was dropping Bitcoin as a payment method due to concerns around the increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining, and the overall impact this could have on energy consumption and climate change targets. As an electric vehicle manufacturer, Tesla needs to be aligned with companies that are also operating in a sustainable manner, and while it was one of the first to jump on the Bitcoin bandwagon a few months ago when it announced that it had bought $1.5 billion of the currency, it seems as though a more rational analysis has been carried out now. This was also the trigger for wider scrutiny around the crypto industry’s use of fossil fuels and energy, and therefore Cardano rose to prominence due to the fact that it only consumes 6GWh of power. The biggest reason for this is that Cardano uses a proof of stake (PoS) algorithm, rather than the proof of work (PoW) algorithm used by Bitcoin and others. With POS, cryptocurrency miners can mine or validate block transactions based on the amount of coins a miner holds. Proof of Stake (PoS) gives mining power based on the percentage of coins held by a miner. On the other hand, POW requires huge amounts of energy, with miners needing to sell their coins to ultimately foot the bill.

This, along with the fact that Cardano developers use peer-reviewed scientific research as the building blocks for updates, to make sure any changes made are useful and scalable, are the two biggest reasons for the token’s popularity. It is also interesting to note that Cardano is developing a smart contracts platform to allow full enterprise-level decentralized apps (dApps) to be created, thus putting it on par with the Ethereum network.

It is also interesting to see how Cardano has already started making an impact, with the online gambling industry as a prime example. Online gambling has embraced cryptocurrencies in a big manner, with several online casinos now offering the option of using cryptocurrencies to place bets to their customers, and Cardano has become one of the tokens that is growing in popularity in this market as well. Some of the most notable online casinos that offer Cardano as a betting option include Fairspin, Bitcasino and True Flip. All three of these are casinos that also utilise blockchain platforms in their operations, which makes them quicker, safer and more reliable to use than traditional online casinos.

Thus, with all of this information, it is no surprise that the price of Cardano has been increasing in recent weeks and months. There are several predictions around the price of the token by the end of the year – some more optimistic than others, but the general consensus is that this is a token to keep an eye on this year.