Cryptocurrency markets move according to supply and demand. However, as they are decentralised, they tend to remain free from many of the economic and political concerns that affect traditional currencies. While there is still a lot of uncertainty surrounding cryptocurrencies, the following factors can have a significant impact on their prices: Supply: the total number of coins and the rate at which they are released, destroyed or lost Market capitalisation: the value of all the coins in existence and how users perceive this to be developing Press: the way the cryptocurrency is portrayed in the media and how much coverage it is getting Integration: the extent to which the cryptocurrency easily integrates into existing infrastructure such as e-commerce payment systems Key events: major events such as regulatory updates, security breaches and economic setbacks
Among those who called it, hedge fund manager Mark Dow wrote almost exactly a year ago about his decision to short bitcoin after future trading on it first began:

Cardano is up over 9 percent in the last 24 hours and nearly 14 percent in the previous week. It is priced at around $2.23.
It has a shorter blockchain creation time (one minute) and a vastly greater number of coins in circulation — the creators’ target of 100 billion units mined by July 2015 was met, and there’s a supply limit of 5.2 billion units mined every year thereafter, with no known supply limit.