The number of whales on the Cardano ($ADA) network has recently started growing, at a time in which the cryptocurrency has been seeing its trading volume rise, along with its price amid a wider cryptocurrency market recovery.

According to on-chain analytics firm Santiment, 20 new addresses holding over 1 million $ADA tokens have popped up recently, after the price of the cryptocurrency jumped more than 30% since the end of December, and as its trading volume rose to a 2-month high.

The cryptocurrency’s recovery came whale addresses recently restarted accumulating $ADA, which could be a main validator to watch for the cryptocurrency’s breakout. As reported, after dumping over 560 million $ADA over the final two months of 2022 $ADA whales have restarted accumulating this year, adding 217 million tokens to their stash so far.

Notably, the cryptocurrency community has set a bullish price target for $ADA this month, presumably taking into account the network’s growing adoption. The average of nearly 3,400 cryptocurrency community members pointed to the smart contract platform’s price trading at $0.495 by the end of January, representing an 83% rise from $ADA’s initial $0.27 level.

It’s important to point out that the cryptocurrency community’s predictions may not come to life at all. According to the platform, the community’s historical accuracy is of little over 41%, with recent data showing it was at around 60% in September and October 2022 to hit 6.8% in December.

According to an analysis by on-chain analytics firm Santiment Cardano may be “severely undervalued” Its analysis has shown that both shark and whale addresses (holdings between 100,000 and 10 million tokens) have been actively accumulating ADA over the past six weeks.

Earlier this week, popular Cardano influencer “ADA whale” predicted ADA will become a top 3 cryptocurrency by market capitalization. The prediction was based on ADA’s impressive rally so far this year.

Dan Gambardello, Founder of Crypto Capital Venture and host of the popular YouTube channel “Crypto Capital Venture”, had said that ADA is “undervalued and oversold” and it will be one of the best coins to own in this year. He said that ADA is “just doing its thing” and it will make sense in the long term.

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