Cardano’s Ada hits record price $2.49 amid expectation of software upgrade

Cardano's Ada soared more than 14 percent to $2.49 by 12:52 am EDT Friday, raising its market capitalization above $75 billion, amid anticipation for an upcoming software upgrade that could help the token compete with Ethereum.

Last week, Ada became the world's third-largest cryptocurrency

As of 11:00 pm EDT, Thursday fervor, more than $8 billion worth of Ada tokens had traded hands in 24 hours.

The token has soared 85 percent after Cardano Founder Charles Hoskinson teased a September network upgrade, named Alonzo, which will enable the Cardano blockchain to process self-executing agreements between buyers and sellers.

Such a process helped Ethereum dominate the booming $100 billion decentralized finance industry.

But Cardano's newer network has drawn skeptics, such as ex-billionaire hedge fund manager Mike Novogratz.

Novogratz described Ada’s rise as "a mystery" to him and suggested its platform was struggling to gain traction among software developers.

Cardano's Ada skyrocketed in May after billionaire Elon Musk said Tesla would no longer accept bitcoin due to the hefty electricity used to “mine” new coins.

Hoskinson claims Cardano uses just 6-gigawatt hours of energy annually, less than 0.01 percent of the 115.85 terawatt-hours bitcoin is estimated to use.

Ada has skyrocketed 1,300 percent this year to become the best-performing top five cryptocurrencies compared, surpassing the returns of 1,030 percent for Binance coin, 330 percent for ether, and 59 percent for bitcoin.