Wallets holding at least 1 million ADA tokens now control 25.1 billion coins, the largest concentration of the asset since July 2020, according to Santiment analytics. Large holders account for 67.5% of ADA's circulating supply.
The accumulation has persisted even as Cardano's token declined over 70% during the past nine months and shed more than 20% year to date. The holder concentration represents the first time since mid-2020 that whales have controlled such a significant share of the network's liquid tokens.
Cardano whale behavior has long been monitored as a proxy for institutional or long-term holder conviction. The share of supply held by wallets with 1 million-plus tokens can shift with exchanges' custody arrangements, staking protocols' wallet structures, and natural token movements. Santiment tracks holdings by parsing blockchain wallet data and classifying addresses by balance thresholds.
The 67.5% figure exceeds whale concentration during most of the 2021 bull market, when distributed retail participation was broader. In early 2021, before retail adoption peaked, whale holdings hovered around 65-68%. The return to that threshold coincides with Cardano's price pullback from its November 2021 high of $3.10 to current levels near $0.90.
Large-holder accumulation during downturns is commonly interpreted by market participants as a sign that long-term holders view current prices as undervalued, though on-chain data alone cannot distinguish between deliberate buying and passive hodling through price decline. Cardano's network has processed over 5 million transactions daily on average, according to chain data, a metric independent of holder concentration.
