Cardano Spot Flows Drop 1917.11% in Matter of Hours, Market Signal?

Cardano saw a significant drop in spot flows in a matter of hours as traders reacted to the ongoing decline in the market.

The crypto market largely traded in the red on Friday, with most cryptocurrencies, especially in the top 100, posting losses between 1% and 11%.

Cardano itself was down 4.60% in the last 24 hours to $0.166. Amid the drop, the spot flow metric, which depicts the capital moving into and out of spot markets across crypto exchanges, is flashing a signal that might be hard to ignore.

Cardano spot flows dropped by 1,917.11% in four hours, with outflows exceeding inflows, according to CoinGlass data. In this time frame, $1.19 million was recorded as inflows while outflows amounted to $1.49 million, with a negative net flow recorded at $303,100. The negative net flow might suggest increased withdrawals from crypto exchanges rather than deposits in the timeframe, indicating a rise in buying activity at the time.

Cardano prepares for next major upgrade

Following a successful van Rossem hard fork upgrade, Cardano, through the Intersect hard fork working group, is already discussing, assessing, and coordinating preparations for the next major Cardano upgrade, the Dijkstra era hard fork, which will introduce Ouroboros Leios to the network.

The van Rossem hard fork governance action was enacted at the epoch boundary in epoch 644 on July 18, 2026, at 21:44:51 UTC. The hard fork marked an achievement for the Cardano ecosystem and the whole community, being the first hard fork in the full governance era, voted on by all three governance bodies: DReps, SPOs, and CC.

In a fresh post-hard fork update, Intersect reported that there was a nearly 10-minute gap before the first block was produced after the enactment of the hard fork governance action. Although transient in nature, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) and engineering teams continue to monitor the network behavior.

Observations made while entering a new epoch showed no issues, with a block being created just under 15 seconds into the new epoch, well within the standard average 20-second block range.