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Cardano – Understanding why ADA’s whales aren’t ‘buying the dip’

Whales are busy for Cardano. No, they aren't accumulating. Instead, they are...

Cardano whales swim away
  • ADA dropped nearly 21% on a monthly timeframe.
  • Whale cohort holding more than 1,000 ADA coins shrank significantly.

Cardano’s [ADA] price action has been underwhelming in recent weeks, fuelling serious concerns among holders of the coin. In fact, the ninth-largest cryptocurrency slipped by 11% over the week, and by nearly 21% over the month, as per CoinMarketCap. By doing so, ADA has emerged as one of the market’s biggest under-performers.

Generally, periods of such correction are utilized by a seasoned cohort of users to accumulate at low prices. However, this was not the case with ADA.

Whales are not interested in ADA

The last 2-3 weeks have seen a considerable drop in whale interest in the coin. This was evidenced by a slump in transactions worth more than $1k, as observed by AMBCrypto using Santiment’s data. Furthermore, the cohort holding between 1,000 to 1 million coins shrank significantly over the aforementioned period – A sign that whales were offloading.

Cardano whale activity
Source: Santiment

Popular technical analyst Ali Martinez interpreted these observations as bearish signals. He predicted that they could either lead to price stagnation, or worse, further declines.

The bearish sentiment among whales was also seen in ADA’s derivatives market. According to AMBCrypto’s analysis of Hyblock Capital data, total number of whale positions on Binance that were long on ADA dropped from 76% in mid-March to 67%, at the time of writing.

In fact, retail investors had a higher long exposure than whales, as per the Whale v. Retail Delta indicator.

ADA whales in derivatives market
Source: Hyblock Capital

Whales’ unwillingness to engage with ADA highlighted the low confidence they had in its potential to bounce back – A sentiment which could rub off on the broader market.


Read ADA’s Price Prediction 2024-25


ADA suffers another jolt

The latest blow to the struggling altcoin came when Grayscale, the world’s largest digital asset manager, dropped it from the flagship Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund (GDLC).

The removal from a fund, whose shares reflect the value of a basket of large-cap digital cryptocurrencies, may point to ADA’s waning prominence in the market.

ADA was trading at $0.58 at press time, remaining flat over the last 24 hours.

Disclaimer: AMBCrypto's content is meant to be informational in nature and should not be interpreted as investment advice. Trading, buying or selling cryptocurrencies should be considered a high-risk investment and every reader is advised to do their own research before making any decisions.

Aniket Verma works as a journalist at AMBCrypto. Contrary to most who are primarily interested in merely tracking price movements of cryptos, his focus is on examining the niche intersection between cryptocurrencies and traditional finance. A so-so Bitcoin maximalist, Aniket has a strong disdain for memecoins and the unfounded frenzy they seem to generate every market season. Coming from a strong engineering background, Aniket previously worked as a Content Manager for TV9 Network. Before his stint over there, he was an Associate Multimedia News Producer at Reuters.

AMBCrypto was founded in 2018 with a mission to simplify and bring the latest blockchain and cryptocurrency news to our readers. We have quickly grown into the digital news source for an emerging generation of cryptocurrency enthusiasts, reaching more than a million readers on a monthly basis, across the globe.