Cardano (ADA) has steadied after bouncing back above the $1.30 level earlier in the day but is still exhibiting signs of weakness on account of a bearish outlook among investors towards the overall crypto market. At the time of writing, ADA/USD is trading around $1.33.

Cryptocurrencies appear to be facing a bit of a regulatory backlash lately, with several governments and regulatory authorities cautioning investors about the high levels of volatility and unpredictability while investing in them. The latest downbeat mood in the market was triggered by the UK announcing a ban on Binance – the world’s most popular crypto exchange, following which banks in the country have stopped their customers from making payment transferring into their accounts on the platform.

In addition to the overall bearish mood, Cardano faced some backlash over social media earlier this week when some critics called out its founder Charles Hoskinson for not meeting the goals he forecast last year with regards to the network’s growth and adoption. However, in a recent video, Hoskinson retorted via a video post in which he detailed the progress on the upcoming Alonzo upgrade, which would give the network smart contract capabilities and expand its use cases significantly.

He went on to talk about the Catalyst Project which funds dApp proposals and also added, “To be honest, we already have that kind of traction. There are tens of thousands of assets, over ten million dollars of NFTs I think have been sold, if we’re counting correctly, throughout the Cardano network.”

In addition to the upcoming upgrade, Cardano also found some support this week from the company announcing two interesting and promising partnerships. The first one saw the ADA token being listed on the Nexo Exchange while the second announcement about a collaboration with DeFi aggregator Orion Protocol that can increase the availability of ADA tokens for global traders.

Key Levels to Watch

On the 4-hour chart of ADA/USD, moving averages leading technical indicators MACD and momentum are exhibiting a bearish bias. However, there seems to be some buying interest, as signaled by the Stochastic RSI which is in the buy zone.

The price is sitting right on a support level at $1.33 but well above the next support below which is at $1.20. A bullish turnaround would require the price to move past the pivot point at $1.41 to test resistance at the $1.54 level.