Cardano Whales Seize Dip as ADA Retreats to $0.21, Leaving Market Signals Mixed

Major Holders Buy Into Weakness

Cardano’s price has declined more than 7% since the start of the week, with ADA trading near $0.21 on Friday as the broader market remained under pressure. Despite the sell-off, on-chain surveillance from Santiment reveals that sophisticated investors took the opposite stance, accumulating tokens aggressively. According to Santiment’s Supply Distribution data, wallets holding between 10 million and 100 million ADA tokens combined to purchase approximately 160 million coins since Sunday—a significant accumulation that indicates confidence in longer-term value at depressed prices.

Whale purchases during market corrections often serve as a contrarian indicator, suggesting that institutional or experienced holders believe the downside has been overdone. However, the timing of recovery is never certain. While this buying activity provides some psychological support, it has yet to generate enough fresh demand to reverse ADA’s immediate bearish momentum.

Derivatives Markets Show Conflicting Signals

Futures and leveraged trading data paint a more pessimistic near-term picture. CoinGlass reported that Cardano’s long-to-short ratio dropped to 0.90 on Friday, marking its lowest level in more than a month. Readings below 1.0 indicate that short positions outweigh long positions among derivatives traders, reflecting widespread expectations of additional price declines ahead.

However, the funding rate—which measures the cost of holding leveraged positions—tells a different story. According to CoinGlass, ADA’s open interest-weighted funding rate turned positive on Thursday, reaching 0.0013% by Friday. A positive funding rate typically emerges when long-position holders outnumber shorts or when bullish momentum accelerates, as longs must pay shorts to maintain positions. This divergence between the derivatives landscape and the funding dynamic illustrates genuine trader indecision about Cardano’s trajectory over the coming days and weeks.

Technical Picture Remains Ambiguous

On the price chart, ADA maintains some technical support from its exponential moving averages. The token remains above both its 50-day EMA at $0.190 and 100-day EMA at $0.197, a positioning that typically favors longer-term bulls. Yet momentum indicators suggest the recent rebound is losing steam—the Relative Strength Index has retreated toward neutral territory around 50, while the Moving Average Convergence Divergence histogram is contracting.

Key resistance targets sit at $0.213 (the 50% Fibonacci retracement of the recent decline), followed by $0.231 and $0.236. A sustained break above this zone could clear the path toward a significant supply area between $0.245 and the 200-day EMA at $0.246. Breaking decisively above that region would signal a shift in the broader trend.

The tension between whale accumulation and bearish derivatives positioning reflects the crypto market’s current struggle to establish direction—a dynamic that will shape how broadly all digital assets, including XRP, navigate the months ahead.

Source: Santiment, CoinGlass, CryptoQuant, via the source. Not financial advice.