Large Cardano holders accumulated tokens as price declined and upgrades approached

Large holders of Cardano's ADA token bought roughly 230 million coins in late March, even as the price dropped around 70 percent from $0.90 to about $0.26. These so-called whale wallets, holding between 100,000 and 100 million ADA, added approximately 819 million tokens over six months. By April, the number of addresses holding ten million ADA or more climbed to 424, the highest figure in four months at that time.

During the same period, daily transactions and smart contract usage fell to their lowest levels in 45 days. Despite this, a new payment plugin called ADA Pay gave more than seven million businesses the ability to accept the token. Planned upgrades, including the Hydra scaling system and a hard fork called Protocol 11, were approaching release during this accumulation period.