Cardano's Leios testnet has just reached a throughput six times higher than the mainnet, yet the milestone has so far failed to translate into price movement for ADA. Leios is Cardano's long-term scaling upgrade, designed to raise the network's transaction throughput by restructuring how blocks are produced and validated, so the testnet figure is an early signal of where the chain's capacity could head once the changes ship to mainnet. The veteran altcoin continues to trade just below the $0.20 resistance area, a sensitive zone where profit-taking behavior plays a decisive role.

Millionaire Holders Top Up Their Cardano Reserves

ADA's daily trading volume of $375,658,800 suggests that a significant price move may be building, and large holders are likely to play a major part in determining its direction. Last week, crypto investors acquired roughly 160 million ADA tokens at a price of $0.1776, with wallets holding between 10 million and 100 million ADA accounting for the largest share of the buying.

With ADA's price stabilizing across multiple timeframes, two key scenarios come into focus: either Cardano's bulls stage one of the year's strongest recoveries after a 93% drawdown from its all-time high near $3.09, set in September 2021, or short-sellers push the token back toward the substantial demand zone between $0.14 and $0.15, as occurred in June. Large-holder accumulation during prolonged drawdowns is a pattern frequently tracked across crypto markets, since heavyweight wallets can absorb supply that would otherwise weigh on price.

Excess Leverage Spills Out as Whales Turn Positive

The current setup is conflicting. Shorter timeframes show Cardano whales distributing their holdings, which could indicate portfolio rebalancing as well as outright selling. The daily timeframe, however, paints a clearer picture of conviction: whales have been buying ADA for ten consecutive days, pushing the Chaikin Money Flow (CMF) to 0.08.

The CMF gauges whale sentiment, while the broader retail picture is reflected in the SuperTrend indicator. On the daily candlesticks, it sits around $0.182 — a level Cardano's bulls have already flipped into support after breaking through the resistance. The altcoin now faces the 200-day EMA at $0.246, which represents the main overhead supply zone. On shorter timeframes, this key metric sits roughly two cents higher, between $0.202 and $0.208, an area ADA has yet to reclaim.

The long/short ratio of 0.85 on leveraged markets points to increased short-selling speculation, but the open interest (OI) weighted funding rate continues to favor bulls despite similar-sized liquidations on both sides over the past seven days. For watchers of the setup, the main reference points going forward are whether ADA can reclaim the $0.202–$0.208 area on shorter timeframes, whether whale buying on the daily timeframe extends past ten days, and how the Leios upgrade progresses from testnet toward mainnet deployment.