Cardano climbed to about $0.279 on Oct. 6, testing resistance near $0.28 after a nearly 9% weekly gain. Santiment data shows open interest rose 25% during the rally rather than falling, challenging the idea that short covering drove the move.
Cardano traded near $0.279 on Oct. 6, up roughly 2.7% over 24 hours and close to 9% over seven days, according to CoinGecko. CoinGlass separately placed ADA near $0.279 with futures open interest around $696 million at its latest reading.
The move extends a recovery that took ADA from around $0.244 on Oct. 3 to above $0.27 by Oct. 5, CoinGecko historical data shows. ADA has pushed through a long-running descending trendline on the weekly chart and is now testing the 0.277–0.28 area.
Cardano price is testing resistance around $0.28
The weekly Bollinger Bands place the upper band near $0.2738, with ADA trading slightly above it. RSI stands near 56.47, above the neutral 50 level and its moving average around 44.07, but still below the traditional 70 overbought threshold.
A weekly close above roughly $0.277 would strengthen the breakout structure, with the next immediate area around $0.30. The current weekly candle has not closed, however, leaving open the possibility that ADA falls back below the breakout area.
Rising open interest challenges the short-squeeze explanation
Santiment has pushed back against claims that the rally was mainly caused by short sellers closing positions. The firm's daily-close data showed ADA rising roughly 10% between Oct. 3 and Oct. 5 while open interest increased approximately 25% to $304 million. Measured in ADA instead of dollars, open interest still rose around 13%.
Closing short positions normally reduces open interest, yet Santiment's series showed outstanding positions increasing during the rally. Whale activity also rose: Santiment counted 413 ADA transactions worth at least $100,000 on Oct. 5, roughly 2.2 times the weekday average recorded between Sept. 7 and Oct. 2. Social volume, by contrast, reached only around 1.1 times its earlier baseline.
RealFi went live before ADA accelerated
RealFi officially launched on the Cardano mainnet on Oct. 1, introducing the dollar-linked asset USDrf and its staked counterpart sUSDrf, backed by a portfolio that includes direct lending, money-market instruments, Treasury bills and floating-rate bonds. Launch partners included SundaeSwap, Lace and Liqwid.
Network data has improved alongside the price recovery: DefiLlama shows Cardano DeFi TVL near $70 million, while seven-day decentralized-exchange volume stood above $42 million. Still, current TVL remains well below levels recorded in earlier Cardano cycles.
$0.30 comes first before larger targets
For the immediate setup, $0.30 sits closer, though ADA needs to clear the 0.28–0.29 area first. Losing the breakout would bring the upper Bollinger Band around $0.274 back into focus.
Cardano attends TOKEN2049 Singapore on Oct. 7 and 8, its largest Asia-Pacific presence yet. The appearance follows the cancellation of a separate Cardano Summit, after a 7.8 million ADA treasury funding proposal received 65.2% support but failed to reach the required two-thirds threshold. Separately, founder Charles Hoskinson renewed his request for Gemini to list ADA, responding "List ADA" to a post from Gemini co-founder Tyler Winklevoss.
Source: crypto.news
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