ADA has always been a holder’s token. The network boasts one of the highest percentages of its circulating supply that is currently staked by investors. These investors usually believe that the best way to make a profit is to stake and earn tokens while simultaneously helping secure the network. This is what has led to the massive support for the digital asset and it looks like the whales are not left out of this as they have continued to increase their holdings.
ADA Whales Take Over
Just like with any digital asset, ADA has its fair share of whales. These whales who hold more than 10 million ADA command a significant amount of the circulating supply of the token and for the past two years have kept their holdings low. However, with the price decline of the digital asset, whales have taken this opportunity to increase their holdings in the digital asset, leading to the highest percentage it has ever been in the last two years.
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A recent report from Santiment showed that the whales holding more than 10 million ADA on their balances reached as high as 46.66% as of Monday, a proportion last recorded when the digital asset was still trading for mere cents.
🐳 #Cardano is down -59% since its $3.10 #AllTimeHigh. However, the asset's top whales (holding 10M+ $ADA) have returned to their largest percentage of supply held in two years, at 46.6%. Note that a large portion of these addresses are owned by exchanges. https://t.co/N8IVKH7hPx pic.twitter.com/9kwd0bMJHn
— Santiment (@santimentfeed) April 11, 2022
This holder directly is closely correlated to the drop in value of the digital asset. When the price of ADA had risen to its all-time high of $3.10, this concentration had dropped, presumably as the whales had sold tokens for profit and smaller investors had picked them up. Then again, with the decline in price, this percentage had grown and the further down the price went, the larger the number of tokens held by these whales was.
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The value of the tokens held by the whales at the time of this writing had reached $15.28 billion. This accounts for 46.19% of the total supply, meaning that these whales own half the market cap of the digital asset.
Who Are The Whales?
The identity of the ADA whale holders is not known but there are often individual owners and those owned by exchanges. These exchange wallets are usually stored for the coins which users have deposited onto the exchange, meaning that they are owned by thousands of users. These wallets belong to exchanges such as Binance, FTX, etc.
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Nevertheless, these whales with more than 10 million ADA on their balances are the largest holder demographic by volume held. Those holding between 100,000 to 10,000,000 coins are the second-largest, holding a collective 17.44% of the total supply. These larger investors dominate the smaller investors by a large margin.
ADA trading below $1 | Source: ADAUSD on TradingView.com
Featured image from VOI, chart from TradingView.com