The crypto market spent most of March on a steady downtrend. Cryptocurrency prices across the board struggled on a downfall as investor caution and a lack of momentum suppressed the bullish narrative that dominated January and early February. With April just beginning, attention has turned to what lies ahead. 

Technical indicators are pointing to both uptrends and downtrends, but a major conversation is taking shape off the charts that could reset the trajectory of the entire crypto space. According to Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson, there are two key regulatory developments that could mark a turning point for crypto adoption and open the door for billions of new users almost overnight.

Hoskinson Predicts Tech Giants Will Adopt Cryptocurrency

In a recent episode of the “The Wolf Of All Streets” podcast hosted by Scott Melker, Charles Hoskinson outlined a scenario where two bills currently being debated in the U.S. Senate, one on stablecoins and the other on market structure, could change the crypto industries. He argued that once these frameworks are passed, major tech companies like Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft will have the legal clarity and infrastructure to integrate crypto wallets directly into their platforms. “Once those two bills pass, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, are going to say hey, we’re crypto people now,” Hoskinson said.

These companies already possess the infrastructure to onboard new crypto users: massive user bases, global infrastructure, payment processing tools, and familiarity with digital wallets. Once regulations provide a clear path forward, these tech companies will easily allow their users to buy and sell cryptocurrencies without leaving their ecosystems. This move wouldn’t be a gradual progress but a sudden leap into mass adoption that would unlock access to a userbase of over 3 billion users around the world.

The 3 Billion User Effect: What Will This Mean For The Crypto Industry?

The stablecoin legislation, formally titled the Stablecoin Transparency and Accountability for a Better Ledger Economy (STABLE) Act of 2025, is a proposal aimed at establishing clear rules for how stablecoins are issued and backed. It also seeks to amend existing federal securities laws to clarify that payment stablecoins should not be treated as securities. Although the exact timeline for when the bill will be passed is uncertain, Charles Hoskinson believes it will be passed within the next 60 to 90 days.

Once passed, the STABLE Act, alongside the market structure bill, will form the regulatory groundwork for widespread crypto adoption. On a basic level, it would allow major tech companies to integrate stablecoin payments into their platforms, letting users easily pay for services or products using stablecoins. On the higher end, these tech companies could eventually serve as intermediaries between users and crypto exchanges or even take on roles similar to exchanges themselves.

A user base of 3 billion users will bring with it not only increased trading volume but also growth in use cases, liquidity, and investment interest. It would shift crypto from a smaller sector into mainstream financial infrastructure.

Featured image from LinkedIn, chart from Tradingview.com

Trading volumes for Cardano’s ADA token have exploded of late with daily figures averaging around $720 million in February while exceeding an average of $1.4 billion in March.

This rise was spurred by a social media post by U.S. President Donald Trump, who mentioned ADA as one of the tokens that would be included in the nation’s strategic crypto reserve.

Although Cardano is enjoying its moment of mainstream attention, the layer-1 blockchain has been quietly emerging as a crypto juggernaut since it went live in late 2017.

Adoption metrics

The ADA token has a market cap of $25.6 billion but what’s more notable is what’s under the hood; data from Google shows that the Cardano blockchain has more than 5 million unique wallets and 1.3 million delegators, with thousands of new wallets being created per day.

The blockchain also has $329 million in total value locked (TVL), although Cardano Foundation CEO Frederik Gregaard believes that metric is overemphasized by crypto communities.

Instead, he points to “non-value transactions” associated with people conducting real-world – albeit non-financial – activities on blockchain rails: Minting a decentralized ID, tracking metadata, recording documents, that sort of thing. Cardano’s a hotbed of such activity, he said.

“I’m fighting to ensure that 50% of the activity is a non-value transaction,” Gregaard told CoinDesk.

One example of this is Cardano’s partnership with Veritree, which saw the Cardano community donate over 1 million ADA tokens to plant 1 million mangrove trees in Kenya, with each donation verified and tracked on the blockchain.

Last week, the Cardano Foundation also announced a deal with SERPRO — Brazil’s largest state-owned IT company – to accelerate blockchain adoption in South America. SERPRO processes 33 billion transactions annually for 90% of Brazil’s federal administration. Additionally, 8,000 employees will also receive blockchain training.

Cardano’s perspective differs from the likes of Solana and the slew of layer-2 networks like Base that pride themselves on total value locked (TVL) and hype-driven movements like memecoins and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

TVL on Solana grew from $2.2 billion to more than $10 billion in 2024, Cardano meanwhile zipped from a modest $445 million to $537 million in the same period.

DeFi on Cardano

Whilst Cardano Foundation’s CEO said his focus is on real-world use cases, the blockchain still boasts a bustling DeFi ecosystem under the surface.

Minswap is Cardano’s native decentralized exchange (DEX). Its cumulative trading volume hit $3.4 billion this month with December alone notching a near-record $271 million, DefiLlama data shows.

There are also a number of lending protocols including Liqwid, Lenfi and Optim Finance, with TVL across Cardano’s lending sector exceeding $116 million.

But the key part of Gregaard’s mission, he insists, is not to exceed that 50% level for financialized transactions. He sees it as staying in line with the Cardano Foundation’s non-profit ethos, even if it limits potential exponential growth of hype-fueled movements like memecoins.

Cardano Foundation vs Hoskinson vs Emurgo

Fulfilling that ethos has its own challenges, mostly because the blockchain is run by three main entities: the Cardano Foundation, Charles Hoskinson’s IOG and Emurgo. The latter two are commercial businesses, which can cause friction between them and the foundation.

“The intent of having a non-profit was that you can optimize decision-making based on 10 years, it’s different than if you optimize decision-making tomorrow,” Gregaard added.

Some of the friction was highlighted by an anonymous Cardano community member in December, who penned an email on a path forward and detailed how the entities running Cardano were at loggerheads.

“CF’s recent burst of activity is part of a larger strategic play—an attempt to undermine Charles, IOG, Intersect, and the broader governance roadmap,” the email read.

“It’s been a long and difficult road, but I do agree with some of the sentiments of the whistleblower,” Hoskinson wrote in response on X.

Gregaard, however, was more diplomatic about any potential rift.

“There’s no monetary exchange going on between us, but we do work very closely together,” he said.

“We sometimes go to [a conference] and we share a booth. So we come together and we sponsor booths together, that’s the closest you will get to any affiliates, which is very different compared to both the Ethereum foundation or Tezos foundation, where they basically control the Treasury and control the disbursements.”

“On the flip side, we [Cardano Foundation] are the liability umbrella for the community and the blockchain, which means that we are the one who interacts with the SEC and the CSDC and the FMA, and I negotiated MICA with the European Parliament.”