Crypto Whales Gobble Up These 5 Altcoins as Markets Heat Up in May 2025

Crypto’s big players are placing their bets—and they’re not sticking to Bitcoin. Here’s where the smart money flowed during May’s third week.

Ethereum (ETH): The Institutional Darling

Whales doubled down on ETH as institutional adoption hits new highs. BlackRock’s ETH ETF approval didn’t hurt either.

Solana (SOL): The Speed Play

SOL transactions per second crushed Visa’s network last week. Guess who noticed? Exactly the traders who can move markets with a single buy order.

Chainlink (LINK): The Oracle Gambit

With RWA tokenization hitting $50B, whales are loading up on the middleware that makes it all work. Classic ’picks and shovels’ move.

Avalanche (AVAX): The Subnet Sleeper

Quietly stacking enterprise subnet deployments, AVAX saw stealth accumulation from funds that still pretend to care about ’fundamentals’.

Toncoin (TON): The Dark Horse

Telegram’s 800M users finally noticing its built-in crypto wallet sent TON holdings among top wallets up 300%—because nothing beats free distribution to retail bagholders.

While analysts debate whether this is accumulation or just rich traders bored with their yachts, one thing’s clear: when whales move, the market follows. Sometimes for reasons. Sometimes just because they can.

ONDO

This week, real-world asset (RWA) token ONDO has seen increased whale attention. According to Santiment, whale addresses that hold between 10,000 and 100,000 tokens have collectively acquired 2.63 million ONDO over the past seven days.

Currently, this cohort of Ondo whales holds 143.94 million tokens. The token trades at $0.99 at press time, noting a 3% price gain amid the broader market rally over the past 24 hours.

If whale activity strengthens, ONDO could reclaim the $1.00 level in the NEAR term. In this case, the altcoin could rally toward $1.23.

However, if the whales stall or sell for profit, ONDO could lose its recent gains and plummet to $0.92.

Render (RENDER)

RENDER is another altcoin that crypto whales have paid attention to this week. Per Santiment, large investors who hold between 1 million and 10 million tokens have bought 250,000 RENDER, valued at approximately $1.22 million at current market prices.

This growing accumulation trend among whales may prompt retail traders to follow suit, as increased buying activity from large holders often signals confidence in the asset’s potential.

Historically, whale-driven momentum usually attracts broader market participation, which could drive RENDER’s price up in the near term. If accumulation persists, the altcoin could rally to $6.09.

Converesly, if demand falls, RENDER could breach support at $4.72, and plunge toward $4.18.

Optimism (OP)

Layer-2 (L2) token OP is another asset with a surging whale accumulation this week. This is reflected by an uptick in the altcoin’s large holders’ netflow, which has rocketed over 140% in the past seven days, according to IntoTheBlock.

Large holders’ netflow tracks the total amount of tokens entering and exiting wallets classified as large holders (those who control more than 0.1% of an asset’s circulating supply).

When this metric rallies, it indicates that significant amounts of the asset are moving into the possession of these investors, signaling strong buying interest. A rising netflow often precedes price appreciation, hence OP’s price could climb to $1.08.

On the other hand, if selloffs resume, OP’s value could dip to $0.54.