Cardano Foundation is reducing its dependence on ADA. Its latest report shows that after a year of sharp price divergence, Bitcoin and cash now make up a much larger share of foreign exchange reserves.
This change changes how closely the Foundation’s balance sheet tracks the performance of Cardano’s native token.
In a 2025 activity and financial analysis report shared with crypto slatethe foundation announced that its total assets are 287.5 million Swiss francs, or approximately $361 million. This represents a 45% decrease from the $659.1 million in assets it held at the end of 2024.
While the headline value decline reflected a difficult year for Cardano’s native token, ADA, the more notable change was in the foundation’s holding structure.
Why this is important: As the Foundation has historically been one of the largest long-term holders of ADA, changes to its financial structure will impact the degree of internal coordination between the Cardano ecosystem and its core institutions. Lower ADA concentration reduces direct exposure to token prices, but also weakens the feedback loop linking the Foundation’s balance sheet and ADA performance.
A year ago, the foundation announced that 76.7% of its assets were held in ADA, 14.9% in Bitcoin, and 8.3% in cash, cash equivalents, and financial assets.
However, by the end of 2025, ADA’s share had fallen to around 51.6%, while BTC had risen to 25.5% and cash, cash equivalents and financial assets had risen to 22.9%.
Based on this, the Foundation’s holdings were calculated to be approximately $186 million in ADA, $92 million in Bitcoin, and $83 million in cash and financial assets.
This essentially means that Cardano-focused organizations’ assets are no longer concentrated in ADA as they were a year ago. Currently, nearly half of its balance sheet is tied to Bitcoin, cash, and other financial assets.
How Bitcoin gained a foothold in Cardano Foundation assets
Bitcoin’s increased role in the portfolio is not due to an increase in the foundation’s BTC holdings.
In fact, the report shows that the foundation significantly reduced its BTC holdings last year, down 37% to 656 BTC from 1,054 BTC the previous year.
This means that the increase in the share of BTC in the national treasury was not due to the outright accumulation of more BTC, but rather due to relative performance and a broader reconfiguration of reserves.
Market movements help explain the changes. data from crypto slate While ADA has fallen by about 63% over the past year, Bitcoin has shown more resilience, declining by about 25%.
This divergence meant that BTC did not need to rise in absolute value to gain a greater place in the foundation’s holdings. Rather, the resilience of top cryptocurrencies during the bear market helped them gain a stronger foothold.
Meanwhile, the report also suggests that the treasury is becoming more stratified, with foundations finding more use cases for BTC and expanding their cash holdings as well.
The foundation said a portion of the Bitcoin allocation was invested in loans and collective investment schemes during 2025.
At the same time, financial assets, including loans to third parties, investments and shares, increased to CHF 43.9 million (approximately $54.9 million) from CHF 14.3 million (equivalent to approximately $17.8 million) in the same period last year.
In addition, the organization’s cash and cash equivalents amounted to CHF 20.1 million, or $25.1 million.
Taken together, these numbers show that the reserve base is moving beyond simple ADA and Bitcoin vaults to something more diverse and more actively managed.
Spending priorities change
The change in portfolio composition coincided with a clearer reset of how the Foundation spends its funds in 2025.
The report said CHF 23.6 million (equivalent to $29.5 million) was allocated to three strategic pillars including technology, implementation and governance.
Technology had the largest share at 40.3% (CHF9.5 million). This was followed by implementation at 39.6% (CHF9.3 million) and governance spending at 20.1% (CHF4.8 million).
This marks a change from 2024, when the Foundation grouped its activities under Adoption, Operational Resilience and Education. The new structure provides a clearer picture of where resources are currently being directed and how the Foundation sees the next stage for Cardano.
Technology spending focused on protocol enablement, developer tools, node diversity, interoperability frameworks, Oracle infrastructure, and operational resiliency.
The foundation said it is also focused on community efforts to improve liquidity and adoption of decentralized finance. At the same time, we expanded our Web3 implementation team with a focus on integration, listing, and working on real assets.
A key part of the technology and adoption story revolved around digital identity. In 2025, the Foundation launched Veridian, a privacy-preserving identity platform designed to help organizations issue and verify digital credentials based on Cardano.
Implementation spending, on the other hand, included enterprise solutions, identity and traceability systems, regulatory cooperation, education, and ecosystem partnerships.
According to the report, the foundation made Originate available as an open source traceability solution, advanced the Reeve platform through internal use and the first enterprise proof of concept, and facilitated Veridian’s broader rollout, including the United Nations Development Program’s white label rollout and the launch of the Veridian Wallet.
Cardano Academy has also expanded through new courses, distribution partnerships, and multilingual expansion. The foundation announced that its course materials have also been extended to Binance Academy, reaching more than 44 million learners, and said the collaboration also includes Blockchain Institute and Coursera.
Finally, although governance accounted for a smaller portion of the budget than technology and implementation, governance remained central to the Foundation’s 2025 agenda as Cardano deepened its commitment to decentralized decision-making.
The report highlights support for the largest on-chain budget ever filed in Cardano, resulting in 38 separate treasury withdrawal governance actions. It also noted the Foundation’s corporate membership in Intersect and its work across committees related to civic engagement, budgets, technical issues, products, open source enablement, marketing, and oversight.
This participation was reflected in a series of initiatives, including the constitution-making process, the Cardano 2030 vision and strategy, the Cardano Summit 2025 proposal, and the Cardano 2026 budget process.
The foundation also said it supports tools aimed at widening participation in governance, including the open source Cardano Voting Tool, the Proposal Examiner built with Griffin AI, updated governance documents, and dedicated sessions at Cardano Summit 2025.
The Foundation’s DRep Delegation Program announced that 140 million ADA will be allocated to seven construction DReps, with an additional 220 million ADA allocated to implementation and operational DReps. In addition, as the governance transition progresses, the Constitutional Commission’s cold keys have been made public, and the internal framework regarding delegations and elections has been expanded.
2026 will test whether the reset works
The next question is whether the repositioning of the Foundation will lead to a stronger operating story for Cardano itself.
Frédéric Gregard, the foundation’s chief executive, said the foundation’s focus in 2026 remains on technology, governance and adoption by businesses and institutions.
He said the group will continue to work to strengthen Cardano’s role in real-world asset infrastructure, support the expansion of stablecoin markets and DeFi liquidity, and build the open source tools needed for broader adoption.
Notably, this is in line with the blockchain network’s recent efforts to integrate the Pyth Network, LayerZero, and Circle’s USDCx stablecoin. All of these efforts are geared towards expanding Cardano’s DeFi ecosystem and stablecoin supply to attract institutional support.
Cardano will therefore face a clearer test in 2026 to see if a more diversified balance sheet, combined with significant spending on infrastructure, governance, and implementation, can help stabilize the economy around ADA itself.
(Tag translation) Bitcoin
