Cardano Whale’s $6M Mistake: Five-Year-Old ADA Stash Move Backfires
A Cardano whale just learned a $6 million lesson in crypto patience the hard way. The anonymous investor moved a long-dormant ADA stash this week—triggering massive losses as market conditions clashed with poor timing.
Five years of HODLing... gone in seconds.
The whale's miscalculation shows even 'sleeping giants' can wake up to nightmares. While Cardano's fundamentals remain strong, this serves as a brutal reminder: in crypto, execution is everything. Meanwhile, traditional finance bros are probably still trying to figure out how to short ADA with their 1999-era trading terminals.
Cardano seller was a long-term whale
The history of the Cardano whale wallet showed that the ADA was initially received from the project’s genesis wallets. The wallet was linked to previous token rotations from older addresses.
The whale also used the ADA for delegation, locking it with various Staking Pool Operators (SPO). The strange transaction caused speculations about mistaken order size or even a deliberate move. It also remains unknown whether the funds were hacked, though ADA can be swapped on much more liquid markets.
USDA, the token now held by the whale, is also relatively illiquid. To swap into more liquid tokens, the whale WOULD have to use PancakeSwap.
Cardano chain exposed for low activity
The ADA sale did not use any additional tools such as aggregators or automated tools. The Cardano network still lags in terms of DEX activity and available tools. The low liquidity on the USDA pool also exposed the lack of liquidity providers.
At one point, ADA tokens on Minswap rose as high as $4.84, limiting the amount received for swapping. ADA still has highly liquid decentralized pairs, with over $441M liquidity available on solana through the USDC pair.
Cardano only carries around $225M in liquidity, spread across relatively small DeFi apps. The Minswap decentralized exchange only carries around $56M in all its liquidity pools, lagging behind DEX protocols on other chains. Despite Cardano’s attempt to catch up on Web3 and DeFi, even its leading decentralized exchange showed insufficient liquidity pools.
Additionally, the whale did not use any type of strategy when trying to swap. The automated pool trading offers a one-click trade, but this also comes with risks of not receiving the best possible price.
The USDA stablecoin is mintable, although access is limited to a select number of US states. USDA can be minted through a wallet. USDA tokens can be minted against ADA collateral, meaning the whale did not even have to go through a DEX to swap to USDA.
However, USDA also carries risks, including an expanding supply through permissionless minting. USDA swaps are also limited to a handful of pools, and the asset is not represented on centralized exchanges.
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