Buy more as it drops! Cardano "whales" are quietly accumulating, controlling 67% of circulating supply — a near 4-year high

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Cardano (ADA) is currently playing out an extremely contradictory drama: on one hand, holdings are highly concentrated among a small number of "whale" investors, while on the other hand, its on-chain ecosystem is increasingly withering. Data shows that well-funded whales have been quietly accumulating coins for 2 years, and now control nearly 70% of the total circulating ADA supply. On-chain data analytics firm Santiment revealed that whale wallets holding at least 1 million ADA currently collectively hold as much as 25.09 billion tokens, accounting for 67.47% of the total circulating supply. The concentration of holdings among large investors is at its highest level since July 2020, and this accumulation trend has not been interrupted since December 2023. 🤑 Cardano's key stakeholders have slowly but surely accumulated, consistently adding more and more of the existing supply to their bags, dating back to December, 2023. 🐳 Wallets with at least 1M tokens now hold 25.09B $ADA, which translates to 67.47% of the current existing… pic.twitter.com/knuSbfYtaE — Santiment Intelligence (@SantimentData) May 13, 2026 Price Halved, Whales Keep Adding In stark contrast to whales' frenzied accumulation are ADA's dismal price and its continuously shrinking ecosystem. Over the past 9 months, ADA's market cap has shrunk by 71%, meaning the major whales have entirely adopted a "buy more as it falls" left-side trading strategy. On the other hand, Cardano's DeFi ecosystem is accelerating its contraction. According to DeFiLlama data, Cardano's current total value locked (TVL) is only 137 million USD, plummeting as much as 80% from its peak of approximately 686 million USD in December 2024. 24-Hour Fees Less Than $2,000 Overall on-chain transaction activity has also cooled significantly. Data shows that the daily trading volume on Cardano's on-chain DEX is only about 1.95 million USD. In the past 24 hours, on-chain fees totaled just 1,767 USD, far below Ethereum and Solana, which are also among the top 10 by market cap. Additionally, Cardano's on-chain revenue over the past day was only 353 USD, and the number of active addresses was just 15,975. This set of data paints a peculiar picture: although whale investors are aggressively buying ADA, they are largely treating it as a "long-term bottom-fishing" investment rather than participating in the substantive applications and arbitrage opportunities within the Cardano ecosystem. As of the Asian trading session on May 15, ADA is quoted at around 0.267 USD, with a market cap of approximately 9.87 billion USD. Looking back since the cryptocurrency market peaked at the end of 2024, ADA has undoubtedly been the weakest performer among the top 10 cryptocurrencies. While the continuous accumulation by large investors provides a certain degree of psychological support for the price, if on-chain applications continue to show no improvement and fail to attract developers and users back, whether this "great migration of holdings" can ultimately translate into upward price momentum remains a big question mark.

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