Cardano (ADA) came under heavy selling pressure on October 15, 2026, as a hotter-than-expected U.S. inflation report triggered a broad crypto-market selloff and a wave of long liquidations. ADA initially shed about 2.5%, trading near $0.2241 after sliding below the 0.618 Fibonacci retracement level at $0.2310. The intraday low reached $0.2160 before ADA stabilized slightly above the 100-day exponential moving average near $0.2195.
The breakdown pushed ADA below its 20-day EMA at $0.2405 and 50-day EMA at $0.2298, while a rising trendline that has supported price since June remained a key technical focus. According to CoinGlass data, total Cardano liquidations reached $4.27 million, with longs accounting for $4.2 million and shorts just $73,080, an imbalance of roughly 5,747%. Earlier data showed $4.06 million of $4.17 million in liquidations were long positions.
The macro catalyst was a U.S. CPI report showing consumer prices rose 3.7% year-over-year in September, up from 3.4% in August and above forecasts. Core CPI accelerated to 2.6% from 2.4%. The data renewed concerns that the Federal Reserve could raise interest rates, pressuring risk assets across financial markets. In crypto futures, $913 million was liquidated over 24 hours, with the majority in long positions.
Separately, Cardano's infrastructure progress continued. The Musashi Dojo public testnet for Ouroboros Leios entered its third "Fire" phase, following Earth and Water and ahead of Wind and Void, stages named after Miyamoto Musashi's Book of Five Rings. Input Output said the testnet aims to raise load progressively and harden code toward production grade. After Leios reaches mainnet, Cardano is expected to support an initial 5x to 20x increase in throughput capacity.
Additionally, Veridian became the first asset tokenized under Cardano's CIP-113 standard this week, highlighting ongoing tokenization activity on the network.
