Cardano is very much in the spirit of bitcoin

If you put aside your tribalism towards this certain coin and negative feelings towards Charles Hoskinson (and I agree, he is a controversial figure) and just delve into the tech you will see that Cardano is very much in the spirit of bitcoin.

Some examples:The eUTXO model: Bitcoin uses the utxo model (instead of the global state/accounting model Ethereum and many other blockchain's use).This model was adopted by Cardano and extended (eUTXO) to add a turing complete scripting language. In bitcoin there is also a scripting language but it's not turing complete (curious fact, it is harder to create a non turing compete language. For example, turing complete languages were sometimes created by mistake when some tech was created!).It is true that this scripting language in bitcoin was non turing complete by design but I see Cardano's extension as the next logical step.

Consensus mechanism: The most important thing about the consensus algorithm is that it's secure and decentralised. Cardano's Proof of stake algorithm is proven to be at least as secure as Bitcoin's proof of work algorithm. Also, It can even be said that Cardano is more decentralised due to it's many pools/evolving governance/etc...

All in all, I really think that there is a lot of merit to Cardano if you look objectively into the tech.

Cheers :)