Cardano Rallies Following Uzbekistan, Hard Fork, and Ledger News

Cardano (ADA) surged more than 8% over the past 24 hours (as of 11:00 UTC) following positive announcements.

First, the token got the attention of many traders after a press release was sent out by Emurgo, the venture arm of Cardano. It said that Emurgo is setting up a “strategic task force” with the government of Uzbekistan “to lead the development of a legal framework for security token offerings (STOs) and exchanges (STXs) in the Republic of Uzbekistan.”

Together with its partner KOBEA Group, Emurgo will also “advise on infrastructure for digital asset banking & exchange, and blockchain education units” in Uzbekistan, a Central Asian nation with a population of more than 30 million.

Secondly, many Cardano followers were also pleased to hear Cardano’s co-founder Charles Hoskinson during a livestream on January 17 saying that he expects the blockchain to go through a planned hard fork in mid-February.

According to Hoskinson, there is a “pretty high certainty” that the new protocol, known as an OBFT [Ouroboros Byzantine Fault Tolerant] protocol, will be implemented as planned.

“Looks like February — at pretty high certainty — we’re going to have the OBFT hard fork occur. We’re still talking to our exchange partners about that and we just want to make sure all the infrastructure is lined up for it, but infrastructure looks pretty good, so mid-February we anticipate the OBFT hard fork,” the Cardano co-founder said.

Further, Hoskinson also revealed that the Daedalus Cardano wallet software is about to be integrated into the Ledger hardware wallet, which for many users is considered a significant advantage.

At pixel time (11:00 UTC), ADA, ranked 11th by market capitalization, trades at c. USD 0.046 and is also up by 22% in a week and by 35% in a month, increasing its annuals gains to 6.4%.

ADA price chart:

___