Institutional investors appear to have been favoring Cardano (ADA) over other major cryptocurrencies ahead of the cryptocurrency network’s launch of smart contracts through the Alonzo hard fork.
According to data from CoinShares, first reported on by Livemint, Cardano investment products saw $1.3 million in inflows, while Bitcoin and Ethereum focused products saw outflows of over $23 million, with BTC products accounting for $22 million outflows.
The data shows cryptocurrency-focused investment products saw a sixth consecutive week of outflows and have cumulatively lost $115 million over that period. This week, Polkadot and Stellar saw miner inflows of $400,000 each.
Institutional investors are likely bullish on Cardano, just like retail investors, because of the network’s upcoming Alonzo hard fork, which will bring smart contracts to it. Smart contracts will allow Cardano to compete with Ethereum, the Binance Smart Chain, and others with its own decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.
As CryptoGlobe reported, Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK), one of the companies working on Cardano, has revealed the Alonzo Purple testnet has already started its user onboarding process.
IOHK, which has already been helping various exchanges integrate with Alonzo White, plans to talk to more exchanges so that as many crypto exchanges as possible are ready for the Alonzo hard fork combinator event.
Cryptocurrency analyst Lark Davis has recently explained he believes the upcoming hard fork is a “long awaited and very bullish catalyst for the asset,” and expects DeFi apps such as SushiSwap to “integrate with Cardano to capture liquidity,” as they will soon be able to do so.
A recent survey partly sponsored by cryptocurrency exchange Gemini has found Cardano’s ADA is the third most popular cryptocurrency in Singapore, with Ethereum being the most popular, and Bitcoin taking second place.
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