Cardano (ADA) prices extended losses, with long-position liquidations far exceeding short positions.

On Oct. 15 (local time), blockchain outlet U.Today reported total Cardano liquidations of $4.27 million. Long positions accounted for $4.2 million, while short positions totalled $73,080.

That widened the long-short liquidation imbalance to 5,747 percent. In the recent downturn, leveraged long positions betting on a rise appeared to have taken concentrated losses. Cardano was down 1.33 percent from 24 hours earlier at $0.224, and at one point during the session it fell to $0.216.

Broader selling pressure across the market also weighed. The market was shaken again by the U.S. consumer price index (CPI) released on Oct. 14. September consumer prices rose 3.7 percent from a year earlier, higher than 3.4 percent in August and above market expectations. Core CPI also rose to 2.6 percent from 2.4 percent the previous month.

The figures increased worries that the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) could raise rates this month. In the fallout, $913 million worth of positions were liquidated in the crypto futures market over 24 hours.

Cardano's development roadmap is continuing. Input Output said the public testnet for Ouroboros Leios, dubbed "Musashi Dojo", had entered its next phase. The testnet will run from late June 2026 until the mainnet hard fork, and is structured to validate node versions sequentially from an initial prototype through to a release candidate.

Input Output explained that Musashi Dojo had entered the third of five stages, called the "Fire" stage. The company said it plans to test the protocol while gradually increasing load at this stage and to harden the code to production level at each stage.

Musashi Dojo consists of five stages: "Earth", "Water", "Fire", "Wind" and "Void". The stage names were taken from Musashi's 1645 work, "The Book of Five Rings". It was suggested that after Leios is applied to the mainnet, Cardano throughput could increase by 5 to 20 times from the initial baseline.

As a result, short-term price volatility from macroeconomic shocks and the unwinding of leveraged positions have emerged as key variables in the Cardano market. Whether the Leios testnet leads to actual mainnet scaling is also expected to be a key point to watch for the Cardano ecosystem going forward.