Cardano price sends mixed signals as whales start buying

Cardano’s price remained unchanged on Monday, capping a difficult month in which it dropped nearly 18%.

Cardano (ADA) was trading at $0.565 on June 30, down 34% from its May high and 57% from its peak in November. The decline mirrors the broader sell-off across altcoins.

Cardano’s plunge also coincided with ongoing ecosystem challenges. For example, the total value locked in its decentralized finance ecosystem dropped nearly 20% over the past 30 days to $315 million.

Cardano’s stablecoin supply remained unchanged at $31.4 million, much lower than other chains like Unichain, Sonic, Berachain, Base, and Near Protocol. 

Additional data from Artemis shows that Cardano’s network slowdown continued in June. Daily active users dropped to just 20,000, the lowest level since 2020 and well below the year-to-date high of 38,000.

Transaction activity has also declined sharply. Cardano processed 797,000 transactions in June, down from 2.8 million in December 2023.

On the positive side, there are signs that whales have begun accumulating ADA, suggesting growing expectations for a price recovery. Santiment data shows that wallets holding between 1 million and 10 million ADA now hold 5.51 billion tokens, up from this month’s low of 5.45 billion.

Holders with between 100 million and 1 billion tokens now control 3.25 billion ADA, up from 3.02 billion in May. Similarly, addresses with between 10 million and 100 million tokens hold 13.1 billion ADA.

ADA whale transactions | Source: Santiment

A possible reason for the ongoing ADA accumulation is the upcoming Midnight airdrop. 

Cardano price technical analysis

ADA price chart | Source: crypto.news

The daily chart shows that the ADA price is sending mixed signals after falling to the key support at $0.519. On the positive side, this could be a sign that this is a double-bottom whose neckline is $0.863. This pattern often leads to a bullish reversal.

However, this pattern could be an inverse cup-and-handle pattern, a popular continuation sign. It is now forming the handle section. 

Cardano has also remained below the 50-day and 100-day moving averages. Therefore, a drop below the support at $0.519 will confirm the inverse C&H pattern and point to more downside.