Cardano, the third largest proof of stake cryptocurrency, continued to fall during the weekend as traders took leave to celebrate the Christmas holiday. At press time on Sunday, ADA was trading at $0.2596 after a 0.68% drop in the past 24 hours, with the coin’s trading volume plunging by roughly 36.28%, according to data by CoinMarketCap.
Ostensibly, this holiday season hasn’t exactly been filled with cheer for crypto investors. Apart from battling inflation and market volatility, a recession seems to be looming ahead, keeping cryptos such as Bitcoin, Ethereum Dogecoin, and Shiba Inu enmeshed. Since tapping an all-time high of $3.10 last November, Cardano has plunged by over 91.64%, the highest among all the other top 10 cryptos by market cap.
Cardano sharks accumulating ADA rapidly
Nevertheless, despite the brutal winter, Cardano sharks seem to be splurging more money towards ADA at current discounted prices. According to on-chain and social metrics platform Santiment, ADA key shark addresses now hold 4 billion ADA after accumulating 331M more since the FTX implosion. Sharks for this particular cryptocurrency as addresses which hold 10,000-100,000 ADA.
As per the firm, whereas these addresses have been accumulating steadily since June 2021, they seem to have taken this level of dip buying to a new level since the FTX fallout in early November.
“Addresses holding 10k to 100k ADA have added $83M worth of coins since November 7th,” wrote Santiment. Notably, this cohort currently holds its largest percentage of supply in 1.5 years, that is, since June 2021.
Key metrics encourage investors
Besides large addresses adding to their bags, over 200,000 new Cardano wallets have been added in November alone. According to data provided by the Cardano Foundation, the overall number of wallets has risen to 3.80M from just under 3.62 million at the start of November. The cryptocurrency network also recounts explosive growth since 2021, with the number of smart contracts based on Plutus, a smart contracts platform by Cardano, surging by 394% to 4,445.
Furthermore, roughly 7.30M native tokens are already running on Cardano after a 192% spike in the past year, with the number of transactions surpassing 56.9 million, up 139% from 2021. Although these developments are yet to show in price, large investors are likely to continue purchasing ADA with the incentive to hold it for longer as their focus increasingly shifts from value rather than hype-driven investments.
