ADA, the native coin of the Cardano ecosystem, lost its place in the top 10 to Bitcoin Cash earlier this month.
However, it has outperformed other cryptocurrencies in the top 20 list over the last seven days and could reclaim its position if the recovery persists.
The coin has stabilized around the $0.28 region on Wednesday after failing to break above a key resistance level over the weekend.
Mixed signals from the derivatives market and on-chain data suggest that ADA’s short-term outlook remains uncertain.
Derivatives data show weakening bullish momentum
According to CoinGlass, Cardano futures Open Interest (OI) now stands at $440 million, and has been steadily declining since mid-January.
The decline in OI over the past month suggests waning investor participation despite the bullish performance.
Furthermore, ADA’s OI-Weighted Funding Rate data shows that the number of bearish traders is higher than that of bullish ones.
The metric turned negative on Wednesday and stands at -0.0130%, nearing the February 6 levels, when ADA dropped sharply.
With the ratio now negative, it indicates that shorts are paying longs, suggesting bearish sentiment toward ADA.
While the derivatives data remains bearish, the on-chain data flashes a mixed signal.
Santiment’s Supply Distribution data currently supports a bullish outlook for ADA.
The metric shows that whales holding between 1 million and 10 million ADA tokens and 10 million and 100 million tokens have accumulated a total of 240 million ADA tokens in the last seven days.
However, Santiment’s Social Dominance metric for ADA supports a bearish outlook.
The index has been in a downtrend since the start ofthe year, falling again in early February to 0.038% on Wednesday.
The decline indicates fading market interest and weakening sentiment among ADA investors.
The mixed signals from investors could limit ADA’s upside potential in the near term.
ADA could face resistance around $0.3028
Cardano’s price faced rejection around the $0.30 level on Sunday and has been hovering above $0.28 in the last 24 hours.
If the bulls fail to push ADA higher, the coin could extend its correction towards the weekly resistance at $0.24.
The Relative Strength Index (RSI) reads 52 on the 4-hourchart, above the neutral level of 50, indicating that the bulls are still in control.
The Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) showed a bullish crossover on February 13, which remains in place, suggesting that upside bias could still play out.
On the flipside, if ADA continues its recovery and the daily candle closes above the $0.29 resistance level, ADA could extend the recovery toward the 50-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA) at $0.32.
An extended bullish scenario could see ADA touch the $0.36 level for the first time since January 28.
https://invezz.com/news/2026/02/18/ada-stabilizes-at-0-28-amid-mixed-market-signals-check-forecast/
