Cardano (ADA) Confronts Critical Resistance Barrier Before $1.20 Breakthrough

Cardano's native token ADA faces a decisive technical showdown as it approaches the psychologically significant $1.20 threshold.

Technical Tug-of-War

The blockchain's current consolidation pattern reveals mounting pressure at key resistance levels. Market analysts observe ADA's recent price action resembles a coiled spring—building energy for either a breakout or rejection.

Network Fundamentals vs. Market Sentiment

While Cardano's development activity continues outpacing many Layer-1 competitors, traders remain fixated on that magic number. The ecosystem's recent smart contract upgrades haven't yet translated into proportional price appreciation—proving once again that in crypto, solid technology sometimes takes a backseat to speculative frenzy.

Breaking Through or Breaking Down

All eyes focus on whether ADA can muster enough buying pressure to shatter the resistance ceiling. Failure here could trigger a retracement to lower support levels, while success would open a path toward testing yearly highs. Either way, the coming days will determine if Cardano graduates from 'promising project' to 'market leader' status.

Because nothing says 'financial revolution' like traders obsessing over round numbers while ignoring actual technological progress.

ADA Nears Key Resistance in Ascending Triangle

Cardano (ADA) is trading at around $0.82 after a 7% drop since Monday. The past week shows a decline of just over 5%. On the daily chart, the price continues to FORM an ascending triangle, a structure often watched for trend continuation.

Notably, the triangle’s upper boundary sits NEAR $0.95, a level that has held as resistance since mid-July. At the same time, a series of higher lows suggests increasing buying interest. Market tracker TapTools noted: 

“A breakout above $0.95 could open the path toward $1.20.” 

Bollinger Bands on the daily chart are narrowing, pointing to a period of low volatility. The Supertrend indicator remains below the price at $0.8089, showing no reversal at the time of writing. These conditions often come before price expansion, but confirmation is still needed.

If ADA closes above $0.95, the next area to monitor WOULD be around $1.05 to $1.20. However, a failure to break resistance may lead to a drop toward the trendline near $0.80. A breakdown below that area could open the way toward $0.72 to $0.75, a previous support zone.

Whale Selling Adds Pressure Around Current Levels

According to Ali Martinez, large holders moved approximately 160 million ADA over the past four days. These addresses hold between 1 million and 10 million ADA each. Their total balance fell from 5.6 billion to 5.44 billion.

160 million Cardano $ADA sold by whales in the last 96 hours! pic.twitter.com/gpmdXLT65k

— Ali (@ali_charts) September 21, 2025

Despite the size of the move, the price has mostly held steady, suggesting that buying interest has so far met the supply. Recently, similar selling activity saw another 530 million ADA moved over 2 days.

Separately, cardano supporter and content creator David shared a post pointing to the blockchain’s eUTXO ledger model as a reason it may gain more attention over time. He suggested that this structure allows for more predictable execution compared to account-based systems and could help ADA stand out in the future.