Whale holdings in Cardano's ADA token hit record high—what it means for the network

cnbctv18.com:

Large investors, also known as whales, seem to be snapping up Cardano's ADA token at record rates. As reported by Coindesk, the ADA balance held by wallet addresses with 1 million to 10 million coins rose to an all-time high of 12 billion ADA ($9.72 billion) last week.

The increase represents a 41 percent gain since January, as per data from the blockchain analysis firm, IntoTheBlock.The rollout of Cardano's Alonzo Smart Contracts and the success of its Decentralised Exchange, SundaeSwap, may have instilled confidence in the whales.According to DefiLama, a site that tracks DeFi data, the total value locked (TVL) in the Cardano network increased by $50 million in a week, reaching a record high of $160.79 million. DefiLlama's data also suggest that around 70 percent of the funds are locked in SundaeSwap, supporting the theory of increasing popularity of the decentralised exchange.Total value locked (TVL) is the overall value of crypto assets deposited in a decentralised finance (DeFi) protocol.

It has become a key metric for determining interest in the DeFi sector of the crypto industry.This has been a surprising turn of events as Cardano has been in a freefall for the last seven months. The so-called Ethereum killer was trading at an all-time high of $3.12 in September 2021, only to see a continuous downfall of more than 70 percent since then.

And with a current price of $0.83, it seems like Cardano is stuck in an everlasting bear market.Cardano touted itself as a smart contract platform but had zero smart contracts and only a handful of DeFi protocols at launch, the most prominent being the DEX SundaeSwap. But to their credit, Cardano is slowly implementing various smart contracts, such as the Alonzo update."Cardano