Can the ADA, which has been designated as a reserve, turn around in this bull market?

Trump's tweet helped ADA soar by 60%, the policy narrative drove the market value to flip, and Cardano transformed from a "Japanese public chain" to a "U.S. strategic asset", but the on-chain ecology is still in doubt.

This is not the first time that ADA has skyrocketed in a bull market due to the "policy narrative". Why can a public chain that has long been questioned about the "ecological emptiness" always take advantage of the situation?

Flowing Narratives, Iron Pulls: Cardano's Bull Playbook

Looking at Cardano's bull market resume, it is like a "history of hot spots":

• 2018 Bear Market: Focusing on "Academic Blockchain", wrapping technical barriers with peer-reviewed papers and Haskell programming language;
• 2021 Bull Market: Transforming into a "Green Public Chain" and Attracting ESG Funding with the Concept of "Carbon Neutrality";
• 2024 Cycle: Binding the "Bitcoin Layer 2" narrative and announcing the development of a cross-chain protocol that does not require new tokens;
• Outbreak in 2025: Taking advantage of Trump's policies, it will become a "national crypto reserve asset".

Every narrative shift accurately hits the market sentiment, but the ecological progress has always lagged behind. As of March 2025, Cardano's total on-chain value locked (TVL) is only $350 million, less than 5% of Solana; The number of daily active addresses has hovered below 100,000 for a long time; In stark contrast, its staking data is 23.34 billion US dollars, ranking fourth among PoS chains, and the staking rate of 60.1% shows that coin holders are more willing to "lie down and earn" than participate in ecological construction.

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Token-as-a-Product: The Market Cap Alchemy of ADA

BitmMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes once quipped: "Cardano's market cap is not written in code, it is drawn in PPT." Its market capitalization management strategy presents multiple logics:

Technology Futuresization: The team is adept at translating academic concepts into capital expectations. The Hydra scaling solution launched in 2023 claims to be "one million TPS", which will only be used for NFT minting after it is actually landed; The 25-year-old "Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem" plan has not yet been revealed, but it has already boosted ADA by 40%.

Policy arbitrage: From African government cooperation to lobbying for U.S. legislation, Cardano continues to turn geopolitical games into market capitalization fuel.

Tokens are products, and for Cardano, ADA has risen high in the last three bull runs, but each bear market has fallen by as much as 90%.

Behind the Carnival: How Far Can the Policy Narrative Go?

Although Trump's "crypto strategic reserve" has gilded Cardano, doubts continue to ferment:

• Questionable implementation path: The U.S. Congress has not yet approved the relevant budget, the establishment of the crypto reserve needs to go through the legislative process, and the current proposal lacks funding sources and operational details;
• Ripple's CEO revealed as early as January that he discussed with Trump that XRP should be included in the reserve, and now the ADA "hitchhiker" has been selected, and it is alleged that there is a lobbying group operating in the dark;
• Hollowing out the blockchain ecosystem: The founder of Taproot Wizards bluntly said: "No matter how high the pledge rate is, it can't cover up the desert of the DApp ecosystem, this is not a strategic asset, it is a strategic bubble."

The market may have given the answer – 48 hours after Trump's post, the ADA price retraced more than 20%.

This carnival once again confirmed the law of the jungle in the crypto market: when technological progress can't keep up with capital ambitions, the narrative is hard currency. Cardano's survival skills may not be able to build a real moat, but it does provide an alternative textbook for the industry: how to use political maneuvering and storytelling imagination to continue to "harvest faith" in the midst of crypto turmoil.