Since the beginning of July, Cardano (ADA) has been on a significant uptrend, adding 31.3% to its value in just a week. The cryptocurrency is now up 10.9% in the last day alone, pushing its market capitalization up to $2.83 billion.

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Cardano is now at its highest value since September 2018 in terms of US dollar value, and its highest value against Bitcoin (BTC) since April 2019 after reaching 0.00001187 ADA/BTC earlier today.

The cryptocurrency is now up more than 226% since the start of the year, and is by far the best performing large-cap cryptocurrency in 2020—easily eclipsing the 82% gained by Ethereum (ETH), 28.9% by Bitcoin and 91.2% gained by Bitcoin SV (BSV) YTD. This recent growth has also seen Cardano outperform Chainlink (LINK), a cryptocurrency that has also spiked by more than 210% since the start of the year.

Trading volumes are also up considerably in 2020, having multiplied by more than ten-fold since the start of the year. This growth has seen Cardano climb its way up the market capitalization rankings in the last few weeks, climbing from rank 11 on May 31, up to rank 10 by mid-June, and finally to rank 7 today after leapfrogging Litecoin (LTC).

This impressive rally can be attributed to the impending Shelley network hard fork, which is currently slated to occur on July 29 and is expected to massively increase the level of decentralization of the Cardano project. The first node has already been deployed on the mainnet and users will soon be able to stake their ADA via their wallets to receive rewards.

Cardano development firm IOHK also announced that Coinbase Custody users will be able to stake their ADA directly from their cold storage accounts by Q4 2020, leading to hopes that a listing on Coinbase could be in the works—something that ADA holders have been waiting for since at least July 2018. But for now, it's merely speculation.

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