Whales Gobble Up Cardano (ADA)—Is a Price Explosion Imminent?

Cardano’s ADA token is seeing heavy accumulation by crypto whales—those shadowy figures who move markets with a single trade. On-chain data shows wallets holding 1M+ ADA have added over 5% to their stacks this month alone.

Why it matters: Whale buying often precedes retail FOMO. But let’s not pretend this is altruism—these are the same players who’ll dump the second Main Street piles in.

Technical outlook: ADA’s price has been range-bound between $0.45-$0.55 since March. Breaking $0.60 could trigger algorithmic traders and ignite a 20-30% surge. Just don’t expect Wall Street to notice unless it hits $1 while they’re busy shorting something.

Network activity slows down

Source: Santiment

The daily active addresses and the transaction volume metrics saw a sharp drop on Friday, the 9th of May.

The activity was depressed over the weekend, which was uncommon for the transaction volume, but common for the daily active addresses.

Not all slumps in activity coincide with the weekend, however. The daily active addresses at press time were still higher than the values it registered for the majority of April.

The token velocity also dropped alongside the transaction volume over the past few days. This came alongside a price hike, showing reduced sell pressure and not much profit-taking activity, a sign of accumulation.

Source: Santiment

This idea had some evidence. Over the past month, the 10 million- 100 million ADA holder cohort has added 1% of the circulating supply of Cardano.

This translates to $296 million worth of tokens based on the price at press time.

However, this whale cohort was the only consistent buyer over the past month. The 100 million — 1 billion holders added to their bags over the past three days, too.

Meanwhile, other groups appeared to be selling, with only retail showing steady buying since February.

Source: ADA/USDT on TradingView

The 1-day price action chart showed that Cardano fell below the range lows at $0.68 toward the end of March, but has recovered. The same level was retested as support on the 8th of May.

At press time, the bulls were holding on to the $0.8 support zone.

The 20 and 50-period moving averages showed that bullish momentum was dominant. The next price target was the mid-range resistance at $0.91.

The rising OBV showed steady buying pressure, which should help ADA rally higher.