Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has won a $50,000 bet on whether the cryptocurrency’s network would roll out smart contracts before October 1, as the Alonzo hard fork is expected by next month.

The price of Cardano has been surging over the last few months ahead of the implementation of smart contracts on its network. As reported, it went up over 60% in the last 30 days to surpass the $2 mark,

ADAUSDT Chart via TradingView

Its price performance is based on the team’s ability to launch smart contracts on the network. On Polymarket, a cryptocurrency betting site that allows users to bet on the outcome of a number of events, most seemingly started by betting ADA would not launch smart contracts by October 1.

The betting action caught the attention of Hoskinson, who initially responded to the market’s users “really make me laugh.” On Twitter, Polymarket responded by saying Cardano would not have smart contracts by October 1, and was willing to bet $50,000 on the platform on it.

The bet’s rules dictated that the winnings would go to a charity of the winner’s choice.

The cryptocurrency’s network is set to deploy the Alonzo hard fork next month, effectively bringing to it smart contracts. Charles Hoskinson has confirmed that as soon as the hard fork is complete, smart contracts will be available. These will allow Cardano to compete with Ethereum, the Binance Smart chain, and others with its own decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.

As CryptoGlobe reported, Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK), one of the companies working on Cardano, has revealed the Alonzo Purple testnet has already started its user onboarding process.

On the microblogging platform, Polymarket acknowledged Hoskinson won the bet, but pointed to another bet that questioned whether the smart contracts will help ADA’s price surpass the $3 mark by the end of this year.

Last month, ADA’s popular Yoroi wallet launched a decentralized application connector that will make it easier for users to interact with smart contracts and these applications once they go live on the Cardano network.

Demand for the cryptocurrency has been growing over time. Amy Arnott, a portfolio strategist at Morningstar that focuses on cryptocurrencies, has revealed she believes ADA could become one of the largest three cryptocurrencies by market capitalization and go mainstream, along with Bitcoin and Ethereum.

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