What did whales stock up on during the market's "discount season"?

During a period of market volatility and price corrections, major cryptocurrency investors, known as "whales," have been actively accumulating positions across several key sectors. On-chain data reveals their strategic focus areas:

Payment/Cross-Border (XRP): Whales made significant net purchases, with large addresses adding over 1.1 billion XRP (worth over $2.4B) in 30 days, coinciding with declining exchange balances.
Layer 1 (Cardano/ADA): Witnessed rare "rotation buying" by the largest wallets against the price trend, accumulating hundreds of millions of ADA as prices neared recent lows.
DeFi Blue-Chips (UNI & AAVE): Whales added substantial amounts of both tokens, with UNI holdings by top addresses showing strong momentum post-governance vote, and both protocols seeing recovering TVL and revenue.
Meme Coins: While the sector corrected overall, whales selectively bought large quantities of tokens like FARTCOIN, PIPPIN, and PEPE, indicating continued speculative interest.
AI & Data (ENA & TIA): Whale holdings in ENA increased notably, while TIA saw reduced exchange supply and record staking/TVL, highlighting the appeal of AI and modular blockchain narratives.
Storage (FIL & ICP): Both FIL and ICP experienced significant whale withdrawals from exchanges, coupled with rebounding network activity and TVL, suggesting anticipation of demand from AI data storage.

The summary indicates whales are using pullbacks as buying opportunities, focusing on sectors with real revenue or policy certainty, treating meme coins as high-risk bets, and positioning early in long-term trends like AI and decentralized storage. A caution is noted that whale accumulation does not guarantee price increases.

Author: Bitpush Editorial Department

Over the past month, Bitcoin has mostly fluctuated wildly around $80,000 to $90,000, while altcoins have generally corrected by 15% to 40%. This has provided a comfortable window for whales to "privately increase their positions." According to real-time monitoring data of large on-chain investors tracked by Santiment and others, whales are quietly building positions in the following sectors, with some coins even reaching new highs for accumulation since 2025.

I. Payment/Cross-border Settlement Sector: XRP Becomes a Favorite Among Whales

With the SEC's settlement with Ripple finalized, the XRP ETF has moved from expectation to reality, further stimulating whale accumulation. Over the past 30 days, XRP has seen the most significant net inflows of whales among all altcoins.

Addresses holding between 100 million and 1 billion XRP saw a net increase of 970 million XRP.
Addresses holding more than 1 billion coins saw a net increase of 150 million coins.
The two types of addresses together saw an inflow of over $2.4 billion;
The balance of XRP on exchanges continued to decline, hitting a new low since 2023.

II. Established Layer 1: Investing in ADA Against the Trend

Cardano (ADA) experienced an extremely rare "whale rotation buying" pattern over the 12 days from November 24th to December 4th:

The wallet with the largest holdings (holding over 1 billion ADA) began increasing its holdings on November 24th, and has since accumulated an additional 130 million ADA.
Wallets holding between 10 million and 100 million ADA began increasing their holdings on November 26, adding 150 million ADA.
Both groups saw net increases within a few days, indicating that large investors have strong confidence even as ADA trading prices approach recent lows.
Whales have lower costs, and if the price can break through $0.43, it is expected to rise to $0.52. If it falls to $0.38, the bullish trend will weaken and the reversal signal may fail.

III. DeFi Blue Chips: UNI and AAVE Sold Out Simultaneously

UNI: Over the past week, whales added approximately 800,000 UNI tokens (worth nearly $5 million USD). After the fee switch vote was passed, the top 100 addresses hold a total of 8.98 million UNI tokens, demonstrating a strong accumulation momentum, while the supply on exchanges continues to decrease.

AAVE: In the past 30 days, whales have added more than 50,000 ATH tokens to their holdings, bringing their total holdings to 3.98 million ATH tokens.

The commonalities between the two are: TVL continues to recover and real revenue (expenses) begins to rise, indicating that whales have made early moves.

IV. Meme Coin: Overall pullback, with some individual coins being bought at lower prices by whales.

Main battlefield:

FARTCOIN: A single address snapped up 32.43 million tokens ($10.7 million) in 24 hours.

PIPPIN: 40.45 million tokens ($7.28 million) were stolen by whales in 24 hours.

PEPE: Over the past 30 days, whale holdings have increased by 1.36%, accumulating to over 10 million tokens. In short, both speculative and established funds are entering the market, and a violent surge could occur at any time after liquidity dries up.

V. AI + Data Track: ENA and TIA are the most favored

ENA (Ethena): Whale holdings increased by 2.84% in the past 7 days, with the top 100 addresses adding over 50 million tokens.

TIA (Celestia): Exchange supply decreased by 5%, staking ratio and TVL both hit record highs.

The combination of AI-driven narrative and modular narrative has become one of the most promising long-term tracks in this round.

VI. Storage Track: FIL and ICP

Starting in late November, large amounts of money were transferred out of exchanges from both FIL and ICP whale addresses. The number of active addresses and TVL rebounded in tandem, indicating that the demand for decentralized storage from AI big data models is being realized.

FIL: Over the past 30 days, whales have increased their holdings by more than 100,000 FIL tokens, totaling approximately $50 million; exchange supply has decreased by 15%.

ICP: On-chain active addresses increased by 30%, whales transferred over 50,000 coins from exchanges; TVL rebounded to $120 million.

summary

It can be seen that the whale's current operating logic is as follows:

Pullbacks are buying opportunities; buy more as prices fall, and pay almost no attention to short-term prices.

Prioritize sectors with "real income" or "certainty of policy benefits";

Meme coin remains a high-risk, high-reward "lottery zone";

Giant Whale has already positioned itself in the long-term development track (AI, modularity, storage, privacy) 2-3 quarters in advance.

Risk Warning: Whale entry does not guarantee a price increase; it may also create subsequent selling pressure. Please trade only on DYOR, follow trades cautiously, and strictly control your position size.