Cardano (ADA) network experienced a spectacular uptick in whale transactions since the start of February with an average of approximately 1,700 transaction per day valued at a whopping $100k or more. At the same time, ADA jumped more than 5% in the past 24 hours recording its highest retuns in the last 18 months.
Follwing a brutal 2022, the cryptocurrency market has posted exponential gains over the past day. Bitcoin (BTC) surged to its highest level since August following a tepid Consumer Price Index (CPI) that had investors feeling less anxious about the U.S. economy’s future and the Fed’s next monetary policy moves. Ethereum (ETH) along with major altcoins also managed to post impressive gains across the board. The global crypto market cap jumped more than 8% in the last 24 hours to $1.11 trillion.
The total crypto market volume over the last 24 hours rocketed nearly 26% to $74.24 billion. Despite looming regulatory pressures, the crypto market has climbed significantly after the United States Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed new rules that could squeeze digital asset platforms.
Cardano Makes a Blazing Comeback
According to on-chain analytics platform, Santiment, there is an enormous uptick in the amount of whale transactions happening on the Cardano blockchain over the past couple of weeks. Cardano whale activity increased more than a massive 460% compared to the previous month. The analytics platform noted that key Cardano stakeholders are heavily accumulating the cryptocurrency since the collapse of FTX, in November.
🐳 #Cardano whale numbers have risen in 2023, and large transactions have notably broken out. The last time there were this many $100k+ $ADA transactions was in May, & its price jumped +36% from the beginning of that week until its local top in early June. https://t.co/GTuBl9DKWA pic.twitter.com/9GSnMqlomB
— Santiment (@santimentfeed) February 7, 2023
In addition, the sharp rise in activity has positioned Cardano (ADA) in second place among the leading smart contract crypto projects by staking market capitalization, recording a valuation of $10.4 billion, as well as in terms of GitHub development activity, with over 701 events. Santiment wrote,
“Since the FTX collapse on November 9th, whale and shark addresses holding 10k to 10m ADA have accumulated 659.53M ADA, which equates to $235.5M. This turnaround coming from the key stakeholders of Cardano is a nice sign.”
Recently, Input Output Global (IOG), the organization behind the Cardano blockchain, launched a valentine upgrade for its Standards for Efficient Cryptography (SECP) primitives on the Cardano mainnet. The new upgrade will allow developers to use a broader range of native multi-signature designs to build secure and cost-effective decentralized applications (DApps). It seems the Valentine Upgrade will seek to bolster interoperability on the network to drive blockchain growth.
Happy St. Valentine’s day. 💙
We are pleased to report that the #Valentine upgrade – support for #Plutus SECP cryptographic primitives – is now live on the #Cardano mainnet.
1/4 pic.twitter.com/SdYWknKeHY
— Input Output (@InputOutputHK) February 14, 2023
ADA Rockets
The recent announcements have sent the prices of Cardano (ADA) the protocol’s native digital currency, up nearly 6% over the past 24 hours to $0.40. The digital token climbed 4.85% over the past seven days as the broader crypto market surged despite regulatory headwinds.
As per CryptoCompare’s latest Asset Report, the recent rally marked the first increase in trading volume Cardano |(ADA) has seen in nearly 13 months in a “much-needed rebound after hitting the lowest monthly trading volume since October 2020 in December 2022.”
However, Santiment also noted that despite the jump in whale activity, the number of unique daily addresses interacting with the smart contract platform has seen a sharp decline of 27%. It added,
“We saw some very encouraging rises in the amount of unique daily addresses interacting on the ADA network. But after seeing 85,000 addresses moving Cardano on a daily basis back in November, the number has sunk to about 62,000 addresses per day now.”
