Cardano’s founder Charles Hoskinson says Bitcoin wasn’t the only story in crypto’s early days. In the last 12 months, ADA climbed 90%, leaving Bitcoin’s 70% gain behind.
He argues that this gap isn’t new — it’s been widening ever since Cardano switched hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of BTC into building its own network.
According to interviews with Blockworks co‑founder Jason Yanowitz, Cardano’s early backers traded yen contributions into 108,000 BTC. That stash would be worth about nearly $13 billion today if it had just sat there.
Instead, those coins went straight into building Cardano’s network. Based on reports, ADA’s market cap now sits at $30 billion — about 150% higher than the value of the Bitcoin reserve and roughly 2.8 times as much.
Since launch, ADA has jumped nearly 4,000% from its $0.02 debut in September 2017. Bitcoin has rallied 2,400% from a $4,337 price point in that same stretch.
Many investors see those raw numbers and wonder whether they should have picked ADA over BTC from the start. They lay out a clear record of gains. Yet gains aren’t the full picture.
Each network serves a different purpose. Bitcoin leans on being a store of value. Cardano mixes staking, smart contracts and on‑chain governance.
Hoskinson isn’t stopping at history. He predicts Bitcoin could still make a 10× move to reach $1 million per coin. ADA, by his math, could expand 100× to 1,000×. That puts Cardano’s potential market cap in the $2.8 trillion to $28 trillion range.
He points to projects like Midnight, which aims to bring data privacy to blockchains, and to Cardano’s role as a possible “DeFi layer” for Bitcoin. Those are the levers he says can drive the next big leg up.
That vision carries plenty of risk. Blockchains often launch big ideas that take time — or never — find their footing. And pushing ADA to a multitrillion‑dollar valuation would demand major real‑world use, plus a flood of new users and developers. Even a 100× gain would redraw the charts, let alone 1,000×. A Balanced Take
ADA’s run has been impressive. It’s clear that building a living network, rather than simply holding coins, can pay off. But calling ADA “significantly better” than BTC turns on much more than past returns.
It hinges on successful rollouts, deep user engagement, and fresh use cases that catch fire. Whether Cardano will rewrite blockchain history remains to be seen.
For now, investors can look at the numbers, weigh the risks, and decide if they want a piece of a project that bets on being more than just money.
