The more it drops, the more you buy! Cardano "whale" quietly accumulates, controlling 67% of the circulating supply, reaching a four-year high.

Cardano (ADA) has recently been playing out a highly contradictory drama: on one hand, the tokens are highly concentrated among a few “whale” large holders, and on the other hand, the on-chain ecosystem is increasingly depleted. Data shows that well-funded whales have quietly accumulated coins for up to 2 years, now controlling nearly 70% of the total ADA circulation on the network.
On-chain data analysis firm Santiment revealed that whale wallets holding at least 1 million ADA currently hold a total of 25.09 billion tokens, accounting for 67.47% of the current circulating supply, with the concentration of large holdings reaching its highest since July 2020, and this accumulation trend has never stopped 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, Large Holders Continue to Add Contrasting sharply with the frenzy of whale accumulation is ADA’s bleak price and the shrinking ecosystem. Over the past 9 months, ADA’s market cap has shrunk by 71%, indicating that major holders are adopting a “buy more as prices fall” left-side trading strategy.
Meanwhile, Cardano’s DeFi ecosystem is accelerating its decline. According to DeFiLlama data, the total value locked (TVL) on Cardano is now only $137 million, down from a peak of about $686 million in December 2024, a collapse of nearly 80%.
Less than $2,000 in 24-hour transaction fees Overall on-chain activity has also noticeably cooled. Data shows that the daily trading volume on Cardano’s DEXes is only about $1.95 million. In the past 24 hours, on-chain fees totaled just $1,767, far below the market cap leaders Ethereum and Solana. Additionally, Cardano’s on-chain revenue in the past day was only $353, and the number of active addresses is just 15,975.

This set of data paints a strange picture: although whales are frantically buying ADA, they mostly see it as a “long-term accumulation” investment rather than participating in Cardano’s ecosystem for practical applications and arbitrage opportunities.
As of May 15 during Asian trading hours, ADA’s price was around $0.267, with a market cap of approximately $9.87 billion. Since the crypto market peaked at the end of 2024, ADA has undoubtedly been one of the weakest performers among the top 10 cryptocurrencies.