Is whale accumulation the key to a bullish Cardano price prediction?

Large Cardano holders added 454.7m ADA over two months, lifting their share of supply as small retail wallets sold into market weakness and cut exposure.

Summary

• Wallets with 100k–100m ADA boosted holdings by 454.7m tokens, growing supply share from 66.3% to 67.53%.
• Sub-100 ADA wallets sold about 22k tokens, trimming their slice of circulating supply from 0.122% to 0.121%.
• Pattern mirrors past corrections where institutions buy dips while retail reduces risk during volatility.

Large Cardano (ADA) holders have increased their positions by approximately 454.7 million tokens over a two-month period while smaller retail investors reduced holdings, according to on-chain data released by analytics firm Santiment.

Wallets holding between 100,000 and 100 million Cardano tokens accumulated the additional holdings from late November 2025 through January 2026, Santiment reported. The accumulation increased these holders’ share of Cardano’s circulating supply from approximately 66.3% to 67.53%, bringing total holdings to approximately 24.33 billion tokens, according to the data.

The accumulation occurred during a period of market weakness and price declines across the cryptocurrency sector.

In contrast, smaller retail wallets holding 100 Cardano tokens or fewer collectively sold around 22,000 tokens over the past three weeks, the data showed. This activity reduced retail investors’ share of the circulating supply from approximately 0.122%, or 43.96 million tokens, to 0.121%, or 43.6 million tokens.

The divergence in behavior between large and small holders represents a pattern that has appeared during previous market corrections in the cryptocurrency sector, where institutional and high-net-worth investors increase positions during price declines while retail participants reduce exposure.

Cardano, a proof-of-stake blockchain platform, ranks among the largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. The token has experienced price volatility in recent months alongside broader cryptocurrency market fluctuations.

Santiment provides blockchain analytics and on-chain metrics for digital assets. The firm tracks wallet activity, token distribution, and holder behavior across multiple cryptocurrency networks.