Cardano Death Cross Forms as Leios Upgrade Concludes
Cardano (ADA)
Editor:
Eugene Serbin
bitcoinethereumnews.com reports that Cardano has completed a death cross on its short-term charts as August nears its close. The signal appeared on the hourly chart where the MA 50 fell below the MA 200, raising concerns about a potential bull trap. This technical event follows a four-day surge that pushed the ADA price to a high of $0.258 on August 22 before a retreat.
Despite the signal, ADA is up 26.10% in August, building on a 17% rise in July. At the time of writing, the asset was up 0.87% in the last 24 hours and 11% for the week. Weekly gains have reduced as most crypto assets saw profit-taking following the surge.
Rate expectations are moving against the rally as traders add bets on a rate increase. Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh delivers his first Jackson Hole keynote on Friday before the Sept. 15-16 rate decision. Meanwhile, Cardano’s throughput upgrade, Leios’ Earth phase, concluded after 41 days on a public testnet.
Input IO reported that Leios lifted transaction capacity well above current limits without changing the security model. In its first public test, it peaked at roughly six times what the mainnet handles. Leios carried 54% of all traffic in its final days, moving 18x the transactions and 3.3x the data of real mainnet traffic.
How the market reacted
Whalio's own Binance spot order flow for ADA, measured when this story was written up on 27 August 2026. Not the outlet's figures.
Whalio spot data shows ADA trading at $0.2124 with a 1h buy ratio of 56.8% against a 4h ratio of 49.4% and a 24h ratio of 48.3%. The 1h volume delta is positive at +$47,317, while the 4h delta is negative at -$50,969 and the 24h delta is -$779,273. The 24h CVD closed at -$593,085, indicating net selling pressure over the longer timeframe. Buying pressure appears to be building in the immediate short term but fading over the last day. The buy ratio measures the proportion of buy volume to total volume, while the volume delta shows the net difference between buy and sell volume. This data reflects immediate trading activity rather than the broader trend seen in the daily metrics.
The latest daily buy ratio of 45.6% sits at the 5th percentile of the last 322 days, against a median of 49.2% - among the weakest buying days it has had.
Twenty-four hours later
What ADA did over the 24 hours after the story broke. The market moves for its own reasons; this is what happened, not what the story caused.
Was that an ordinary day?
The same Binance spot measurements for ADA, averaged over the days leading up to the story.
Over the preceding week, the 7d average buy ratio was 49.7%, with the latest day showing a 1.4 point decrease from that average. Volume was 0.43x the average, indicating significantly lower trading activity compared to the norm. There were only 2 days of net buying out of 7, contrasting with the 12 hours of net buying in the last 24 hours. The price changed +13.5% over 8 days, with a total volume delta of +$1,076,431 for the period. This suggests that while the immediate hour shows strong buying, the broader weekly context is one of reduced volume and mixed directional bias.