A Hard Fork Activates — and a Forecast Meets Its Outcome

Two ADA rallies sit in this record, nine days and five weeks after the fork respectively, and they are not the same kind of event. The first (21-22 Jul) came within days of the fork and briefly outpaced Bitcoin by more than two to one — consistent with the short-heavy book unwinding, exactly as the pre-fork setup described. The second (19-22 Aug) arrived five weeks later, moved almost as hard in Bitcoin as in ADA, and has no clean line back to the fork at all.

• 5.4%ADA vs Bitcoin's 2.0%, fork to 22 Jul close — Cardano-specific
• 45.8%ADA vs Bitcoin's 21.3%, 19-22 Aug — market-wide

Writing for CryptoNews on 17 Jul 2026, Ahmed Barakat argued that Cardano's setup — a short-heavy derivatives book meeting record whale accumulation — meant “the next directional move is likely to be violent in whichever direction it resolves.” His own binary: a drop through $0.160 would open a path toward $0.1465, a Murrey Math support level; a break above $0.170 would force short sellers to close positions. His own snapshot of the setup: ADA at $0.158 (down 1.39% on the day), long/short ratio 0.58, open interest up 4% to $421M in 48 hours, and a 4-hour RSI of 46.92, below its 50.95 moving average — “bearish-neutral,” in his words, not oversold. This is his argument, reported by name, not this page's own reading of the chart.

• $0.170crossed within 3 days — no sustained follow-through
• $0.160crossed within 9 days — bearish target not reached

It did not resolve the way it was framed. ADA closed above $0.170 within three days of the fork (21-22 Jul), then reversed and closed below $0.160 within nine (27-28 Jul) — crossing both of Barakat's trigger levels in opposite directions, with no sustained move holding either side. The bearish target came close without arriving: the window's low, $0.1542 (28 Jul), sits 5.2% above $0.1465. Momentum in the days around the fork behaved as the short-heavy setup would predict — ADA moved roughly twice Bitcoin's size on the way up and nearly three times Bitcoin's size on the way down — a heavier, more volatile book than the wider market, not a clean resolution in either direction.

The comparison is the honest version of “did the squeeze happen.” In the nine days immediately around the fork, ADA was consistently more volatile than Bitcoin in both directions — a short-heavy book unwinding, as the pre-fork setup predicted. The August rally is a different shape entirely: ADA still moved harder than Bitcoin, but Bitcoin's own 21.3% move over the identical three days rules out a Cardano-specific explanation. Two real patterns, five weeks apart, and only the first has anything to do with Van Rossem or the squeeze Barakat forecast.

A month after the fork, Intersect finalised the scope of Cardano's next era. Phase 1, targeted for Q4 2026, establishes the Dijkstra ledger era and activates Linear Leios — Input Output's own stated target is a five-to-twentyfold increase in base-layer throughput — alongside Nested Transactions and Plutus V4 groundwork. Phase 2, targeted for Q2 2027, activates Ouroboros Peras, a further intra-era hard fork aimed at faster settlement finality rather than higher throughput. Both dates are stated as targets, not guarantees, subject to testing, ecosystem readiness and a further governance vote.

No single dated source tracks the original 100K-100M ADA band continuously past its 13 Jul reading. What exists instead is several separately-banded reports: wallets holding 100M-1B ADA added more than 240M ADA over five days to around 14.5B by 3 Aug, coinciding with ADA's own price recovery. A narrower band, 1M-10M ADA, moved the other way soon after — its wallet count fell from 2,370 to 2,340 between 2 and 11 Aug, which analyst Ali Martinez read as large holders taking profit. These are not the same cohort as the original 25.6B figure, and this page does not merge them into one trend line the data does not support.