In the latest Cardano News, Cardano is trading at $0.158, down 1.39% from July 17, while derivatives traders push the long/short ratio to 0.58 and open interest climbs 4% to $421 million in the 48 hours before the Van Rossem hard fork was activated.
The structural tension is high: the same portfolios that are flooding short books are being offset by a whale buildup that has reached its highest level since 2023, creating a setup in which the next directional move will likely be violent, regardless of which direction it heads.
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Cardano News: Van Rossem Governance Approval Sets Activation for July 18
The Van Rossem hard fork authorized governance on July 13, ratified by SPOs and DReps, with activation scheduled for July 18 at 21:44:51 UTC at slot 192 844 800.
Intersect urged all infrastructure providers to update their software before the network crosses the hard fork boundary, a standard precaution, but one that indicates the upgrade is happening on schedule, without last-minute complications.
The upgrade is reportedly expected to reduce execution costs on Cardano, making transactions and dApp operations significantly cheaper to execute.
More importantly for medium-term traders, Van Rossem lays the technical foundations for Leios, a subsequent upgrade aimed at dramatically increasing transaction throughput before the end of 2026.
This roadmap context is important: this fork is not a standalone event but a dependency in a longer delivery chain, which is part of why the positioning of whales ahead of it carries more weight than typical upgrade speculation.
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$0.160 and $0.170 are the levels that decide the next move
CoinGlass’ three-day liquidation heatmap places the nearest dense liquidity pool between $0.160 and $0.165, sitting directly above ADA’s current market price.
More concentration appears around $0.167, closely matching Murrey Math resistance at $0.1709 visible on the TradingView daily chart.
These two clusters define the binary in the short term: a drop to $0.160 triggers long liquidations and opens the way towards the Murrey Math support of $0.1465; a break above $0.170 forces short sellers to close their positions and adds momentum to the recovery attempt as Van Rossem comes into play.
The 4-hour chart shows that ADA broke above a descending trendline taken from its early July high near $0.195, but the move failed to produce a sustainable rally.
The 4-hour RSI stands at 46.92, below its moving average of 50.95, neutral bearish territory, not oversold. This reading is important because it means that there is no technical basis for extreme pessimism; the price simply drifts, waiting for a catalyst to set its direction.
Van Rossem’s predecessor, the Vasil hard fork in September 2022, improved the efficiency of Cardano’s smart contracts and block usage.
Van Rossem’s mandate is different, cost reduction and preparation of Leios, but the governance process that implemented it, which now takes place through Intersect with the formal ratification of the DRep and the SPO, represents a more mature and transparent upgrade mechanism than that operated by Cardano in 2022.
Whether this institutional credibility translates into sustained buying pressure after the fork, or whether short sellers use any pop to add positions, is the question traders need to answer before the July 18 activation window closes.
The liquidation heatmap at $0.167 is the clearest signal: a daily close above this level removes any ambiguity. For context on how derivatives positioning and institutional versus retail behavior interact during catalytic events, the model is consistent across major crypto assets; the side that controls the spot supply usually wins the battle eventually through attrition.
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The article Cardano News: Cardano’s Van Rossem Hard Fork Activates Tomorrow and Whales Buy While Traders Short appeared first on Cryptonews.
