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Despite a turbulent 2021 for the entire cryptoindustry, the whales of Cardano seem to be untouched by this, as a small number of the richest ADA holders control roughly 94% of the total circulating resources.
The data shows that as of December 13, 2021, the top 10% of Cardano whales hold 31 billion of the 33.43 billion coins in circulation above the ADA, according to data pulled from analysis by the Coin Metrics platform.
It is noteworthy that the number of ADA in the first 10% of addresses has been growing steadily since the beginning of the year. Starting at $ 30 billion in January, the number of ADAs owned by these addresses increased by more than 1 billion, representing an increase of 3%.
The sum of all coins belonging to the richest 10% addresses at the end of this interval. Source: CoinMetrics
Cardano whales accumulate, not sell
Interestingly, Coin Metrics data shows that more ADA is accumulating at these top addresses, which correlates with the increase in developer activity on the web. In addition, according to Santiment, Cardano, Polkadot and Solana were among the top 3 networks with the highest daily development activity by the end of 2021.
Indeed, Cardano is working on a number of projects on its network, such as smart contract development and the DeFi ecosystem. There is a possibility that these changes could act as a catalyst for increased confidence in the asset, which could be related to the increase in the amount of ADA that whales possess.
The best crypto projects leading the daily development. Source: Santiment
Meanwhile, an October report by digital asset manager Grayscale Investments, titled An Introduction to Cardano, says Cardano is undervalued compared to the second largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum. The report comes after the ADA hit an all-time high of over $ 3 in early September, starting at $ 0.178 in January.
The crypto community recently bet that the price of Cardano will rise 80% and reach $ 2.4 by December 30, indicating that the community is confident in its growth. Cardano also recorded higher network activity with twice the transaction volume than Ethereum, and also ranks second in network activity.
Some whales also control Bitcoin
Cardano has a small percentage of whales controlling most of its supply, but it’s not the only cryptocurrency that does this. The number one cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, also has leading whales controlling an even higher percentage of its circulating supply. Earlier this year, it was reported that 99% of BTC in circulation came from just 10% of BTC wallets.
This raised questions about Bitcoin’s decentralization requirements, especially since miners were also heavily concentrated in China at the time. With regard to Cardano, this question has not yet been raised, even though its whale stocks are growing significantly.
Posted by Newt Salamander, Analyst at Freedman Club Crypto News
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