Cardano Drops 3% as Market Sell-Off Persists, Midnight Airdrop Sparks Volatility

Cardano (ADA) fell about 3% in the past 24 hours as part of a continuing crypto market sell-off since the end of last week. It was recenlty trading at $0.72.

ADA witnessed substantial volatility during the period, displaying a 3.47% fluctuation from the session low of $0.734 to the high of $0.760, according to CoinDesk Research's technical analysis model.

The digital asset rose from $0.745 to as high as $0.760 bolstered by heightened trading activity, before meeting resistance and retreating to $0.735 with volume of 59.03 million.

It rebounded to $0.755 before confronting additional selling interest, eventually settling at $0.739, implying that bearish forces may persist as ADA battles to preserve stability above the critical $0.740 threshold.

The overall crypto market, as measured by the CoinDesk 20 Index, is down about 1.7%, slightly less than ADA. Bitcoin BTC$69,459.90 is roughly the same percentage lower.

Earlier today, Midnight — a so-called partner blockchain that uses Cardano's functionality for settling transactions — began distributing its NIGHT token through an airdrop dubbed the Glacier Drop. Wallets tied to XRP addresses received about 2.62 billion tokens, roughly 11% of the total allocation. The remaining tokens are earmarked for holders of ether ETH$1,994.64, sol SOL$86.22, Binance coin BNB$624.28, Avalanche's AVAX (AVAX), and BAT$0.1333, among others.

In a recent interview, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson said the Midnight project has drawn interest from major financial firms.

“We’ve met with all the big guys,” he said, claiming that some were intrigued by the potential for anonymous crypto trading on the platform.

Separately, Cardano’s core development group, Input Output Global (IOG), received approval on Monday for a $71 million treasury proposal to fund 12 months of upgrades to the Cardano network. The on-chain vote drew scrutiny from some community members who raised concerns about transparency and how the funds will be spent.

Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy.

CORRECT (Aug. 6, 08:02 UTC): Corrects Midnight's relationship with Cardano to a "partner blockchain." An earlier version of this story said Midnight launched "on Cardano."