Cardano (ADA) price is in the process of painting its seventh red monthly candle in a row as the token fell to its lowest level since February 2021.
The trend saw ADA's price rising nearly 800% to $3.16 between February 2021 and September 2021, followed by a complete wipeout of those gains entering October 2022. Amusingly, the entire price action took the shape of the "Burj Khalifa," the world's tallest skyscraper in Dubai.
ADA price eyes 35% price crash
The ADA price correction began primarily in the wake of a similar downtrend across the cryptocurrency market, led by the Federal Reserve's aggressive interest rate hikes to tame rising inflation.
Even an optimistic Cardano network upgrade dubbed Vasil was not enough to bring its buyers back to the market.
Notably, ADA's price has dropped by nearly 20% since the Vasil hard fork nearly a month ago — an update aimed at improving its network's scalability and smart contract capabilities.
Moreover, the ADA/USD pair also broke below a key support level that may lead to another major crash ahead in Q4.
The said support level at around $0.42 constitutes a descending triangle, a continuation pattern. In other words, ADA's potential to continue its prevailing downtrend becomes higher if it forms and breaks out of a descending triangle to the downside.
ADA/USD three-day price chart featuring descending triangle breakdown. Source: TradingViewMeanwhile, as a rule of technical analysis, a descending triangle breakdown during a downtrend typically pushes the price lower to a level at length equal to the pattern's maximum height. Therefore, ADA risks dropping toward $0.248, or by 35%, if the descending triangle breakdown plays out.
Conversely, a retest followed by a close above the triangle's lower trendline as resistance raises ADA's possibility to invalidate the bearish outlook. In doing so, it could trigger a descending channel setup forming simultaneously with the ascending triangle, as shown below.
ADA/USD three-day price chart featuring descending channel pattern. Source: TradingViewThe descending channel setup sees ADA bouncing from its lower trendline to test the upper trendline near $0.45 as its immediate upside target. In other words, a 30% interim price rebound.
Macro risks remain
Overall, Cardano continues to tread ahead under macro risks, primarily after September's 8.2% inflation reading, which raised the possibility of the Fed continuing its rate hike spree for the remainder of 2022.
Risk assets across the board have witnessed a decline in individual investors' enthusiasm, which were instrumental in pushing the cryptocurrenc prices higher in 2020 and 2021. For instance, Robinhood Chief Executive Vlad Tenev noted:
"2020 and 2021, people were really interested in investing in stocks. There was widespread participation in the stock market. Now people are talking about gas prices and inflation.”
ADA, whose positive correlation coefficient with the U.S. benchmark S&P 500 has remained above 0.80 for most of 2022, also witnessed a sharp decline in its daily active addresses (DAA) since November 2021's market top.
Related: Cardano founder points out flaws in Ethereum and Bitcoin
Notably, its 30-day DAA average dropped to 165,000 on Oct. 19, its lowest level in two years, data from Santiment shows.
Cardano 30-day DAA average. Source: SantimentOn a brighter note, the number of Cardano addresses holding 100-1,000 ADA and 1,000-10,000 ADA tokens has increased during the bear cycle, hinting at potential accumulation by large investors, or so-called whales.
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