Smart money wallets have continued to accumulate Cardano (ADA) over the past two months, even though the price of the cryptocurrency has decreased.
Smaller private investors, on the other hand, have sold this asset over the past three weeks. This difference in investor behavior may indicate a potential turning point for Cardano.
ADA whale accumulation differs from the selling pressure of private investors.
ADA has experienced significant volatility, similar to the market. In just a couple of months, the price of the altcoin has decreased by about 19%. After a price rally at the beginning of January 2026, the price turned sharply downwards, and most of the year's gains disappeared.
According to BeInCrypto Markets, the price of ADA was $0.35 at the time of writing, which is up slightly over 2% in the last 24 hours. This moderate recovery aligns with the overall market's rebound.
Although the price has been weak, blockchain data shows that large holders continue to accumulate. The blockchain analytics firm Santiment revealed that large Cardano holders, who own between 100,000 and 100 million tokens, have accumulated 454.7 million ADAs in the last two months.
These recent purchases worth $161.42 million demonstrate that these market participants continue to trust ADA.
A closer analysis of wallet data reveals that so-called whale addresses holding between 10 million and 100 million ADAs have steadily increased their holdings.
At the same time, wallets holding 1–10 million ADAs and 100,000–1 million ADAs experienced a temporary slowdown in demand, but accumulation resumed in January 2026.
At the same time, private investors have continued to sell. Small holders with 100 ADAs or less have sold 22,000 ADAs, worth nearly $7,810, in the last three weeks.
Santiment has observed that whale accumulation combined with small investor sales indicates a potential rebound as the markets stabilize.
"When whales buy and small investors sell, historically this has been an ideal setup for a rebound as cryptocurrency markets stabilize," the post stated.
From the perspective of fundamental factors, the growth of the adoption level continues strongly. The number of ADA holders rose from 3.17 million in November to 3.228 million, according to AdaStat. This addition of 50,000 wallets shows that interest in the Cardano ecosystem has remained.
Cardano's DeFi ecosystem also appears stable. According to DefiLlama, the total value locked (TVL) in the DeFi protocol is $161.87 million, indicating a 1.53% increase in the last 24 hours.
TVL has remained around 460 million ADAs since October, indicating that capital remains despite falling prices.
ADA's technical outlook: what's next for the price?
The important question is whether growing adoption and ongoing whale accumulation can lead to a significant price increase.
From a technical perspective, some analysts see early signs of a potential change in direction. In a recent X post, an analyst noted that ADA is consolidating in a historical demand area where accumulation is clearly ongoing.
According to the analyst, repeated reactions at this level increase the likelihood of a bullish reversal. Based on these, the analyst mentioned three targets above: $0.6386, $0.9358, and $1.3285.
"Risk remains manageable as long as the price stays above the support zone," the analyst added.
However, the bullish scenario faces short-term challenges. Another analyst noted that ADA is still trading below key resistance levels, and the chart shows two significant sell walls above.
Sell walls occur when large amounts of sell orders are placed at certain price levels, creating resistance and potentially stopping the price increase. If the buying power is insufficient to absorb this supply, the price increase may stall or reverse.
Thus, although accumulation data and adoption metrics support a longer-term positive outlook, ADA will likely have to break through these resistance levels before a sustainable recovery can begin.