ADATL;DR Breakdown
- ADA’s price spikes amidst declining high whale tier wallet balance
- Smaller wallet categories have been accumulating the token
- The price surge has been on the back of bullish Cardano adoption metrics.
ADA, the native token of the Cardano blockchain, is picking up momentum in the market. The price of ADA increased 4.21% in the last 24 hours to reach $1.22, a price level last reached in early February.
ADA whale balances are reducing, on-chain data shows
The crypto market behavior analytics platform, Santiment, reports that the latest surge has been accompanied by changes in the amount of ADA held by different tiers of addresses.
High/whale tier addresses (wallets that hold upwards of $100k worth of tokens) have registered massive outflow. While at their peak in 2021, the category of holders controlled up to 94% of all ADA in circulation; they now account for 83.1% of the supply per Santiment’s data.
The data also indicates where the reduced supply could have gone. Santiment points out that there have been marked increases in the holdings of low-mid (0 to 100 tokens) and high-mid (100 to 100k tokens). The former now controls 0.128% of the PoS tokens circulating supply, while the latter owns an ATH 16.8% of all supply.
Essentially, this dynamic points to a more sustainable spread and decentralization of the native token of the biggest proof-of-stake blockchain.
The data is only the latest addition to Cardano whale milestones. Previously, the number of whale wallets was noted to have grown by about 1.7% in March. Similarly, data picked up by IntoTheBlock attributed the whale surge to massively increased institutional demand.
Per IntoTheBlock, the volume of on-chain transactions greater than a value of $100k increased by 50x year to date. On the day the data was published, 99% of the total on-chain volume recorded was moved by this category of transactions.
What has been attracting the whales to Cardano?
Multiple developments in the Cardano ecosystem can be named to be playing a major role in increasing adoption. Cardano’s DeFi scene is evolving at a breakneck pace, with multiple projects having been launched since January, including Milkomeda, a cross-bridge protocol to connect Cardano with Ethereum.
Similarly, Cardano’s metaverse ecosystem has now notched a notable milestone, with Pavia announcing 22,000 unique landowners. Meanwhile, Clay Nation, a Cardano-based NFT project, has also announced a partnership with American hip-hop artist Snoop Dogg.
All these, along with anticipated upgrades coming during the year, have invariably created a bullish narrative around ADA. This has put the token on the radar of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), which is considering expanding its crypto futures offering. In a similar move, Grayscale, the biggest crypto assets manager, recently launched a fund that includes ADA as its largest holding per share.
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