Cardano Whale Wallets Hit 4-Month High as ADA Stays Depressed

The number of wallets holding more than 10 million of Cardano’s native ADA token has climbed to a four-month high of 424.

This is according to data posted Tuesday by Santiment, which shows that the count has risen 5.2% over 9 weeks, even as the token’s price stayed depressed.

Whales Are Buying, But the Price Is Not Following

Santiment said that ADA’s price is about 11% higher than its lowest point this year, which it hit on February 5. However, even with the increased activity among whales, ADA has not decoupled from the rest of the altcoin market in 2026, with Santiment suggesting that if the accumulation goes on while prices are still subdued, then it could form a bullish divergence over time.

Other figures posted by Cardano analytics platform TapTools show that the network processed over 4 billion ADA in transactions across the last five days. That translates to more than $1 billion in on-chain volume, meaning that alongside the accumulation trend, there was also increased network usage.

That whale activity is not new. Recall that toward the end of March, analyst Ali Martinez flagged large holders picking up about 220 million ADA in just one week, to bring their combined holdings then to nearly 14 billion tokens, amounting to 37% of the ADA supply.

Nonetheless, there has been little positive reaction in the token’s price, with ADA trading around $0.24 at the time of writing, down almost 42% in the last 3 months and nearly 53% over the course of one year.

Its current price also puts it 92% below its all-time high from 4 years ago, when it went past $3. Trading volume also dipped nearly 17% in the last 24 hours to just over $361 million worth of transactions from yesterday, which is modest compared to peers like Solana (SOL) and XRP, which managed $2.6 billion and $1.5 billion, respectively, in the same period.

What Bulls Are Watching, and What the Bears Will Tell You

The bullish case has a few things going for it beyond the whale count. Martinez had previously set $0.245 as a support level and noted that similar price zones had historically preceded moves of 85% and 200%. X user ALT GEMS Alert went further, calling the bottom and targeting a move above $0.60 in Q2, though that call came without detailed supporting analysis.

The skeptical view is harder to dismiss. ADA is still trading below its 50, 100, and 200-day exponential moving averages, which keeps the broader trend bearish regardless of what individual wallets are doing. X user gnarleyquinn argued on the same platform that Cardano’s chain is heading to zero over the next few years, pointing to ADA’s market dominance collapsing from around 4.5% in 2021 to roughly 0.3% today.