Cardano (ADA) addresses with a balance greater than $ane million take surged 173% during the latest ADA price rally.

Specifically, the ADA/USD substitution rate gained near 200% after bottoming out at $i.007 on July twenty. The pair reached its tape high of $3.02 in the previous session, a movement that was followed by a 6.42% price correction to $ii.73 at the time of writing.

Meanwhile, the same menses saw the full number of Cardano wallets that concord at to the lowest degree $i million worth of ADA tokens surge from three,625 to 9,830, per information provided by data analytics platforms CoinMetrics and Messari.

ADA addresses with residuum greater than $1 meg. Source: Messari, CryptoQuant

Additionally, against ADA's 1,455% year-to-date (YTD) gains, the total number of Cardano millionaires surged from 504 to 9,830 — a ane,850% bound. That coincided with erratic spikes in Google Trends searches for the keyword "Cardano," signaling retail involvement.

Furthermore, the number of Cardano wallets holding more than $10 million worth of ADA tokens climbed from 504 on July 20 to almost one,000. On January. 1, there were only 86 wallets with balances above $10 million.

Hodling makes Cardano investors rich

ADA's rising in 2021 also led to a spike in the sum of its unspent transaction outputs, or UTXOs.

UTXOs represent cryptocurrencies that have remained unspent in their crypto wallets afterward deposit. Therefore, if a blockchain network sees a rising in UTXOs, it indicates that most wallets are property the cryptocurrency instead of transferring it to other addresses — i.e., a weaker selling sentiment.

CoinMetrics data fetched by Messari shows that Cardano's UTXO count surged from 816,600 on January. 1 to 2.85 meg at the fourth dimension of writing. That illustrates an incredible rise in Cardano investors' "hodling" sentiment, something that might have worked as a backstop to ADA'southward 1,455% YTD rally.

ADA UTXO count. Source: CoinMetrics, Messari

The decision to concur instead of selling ADA tokens found its cues in Cardano's potential to unseat its height blockchain rival, Ethereum, as the latter experienced problems with network congestion and college transaction fees at the kickoff of this year.

For example, ADA/USD surged 579% in the outset quarter on optimism around its "Mary" upgrade, a protocol update that made Cardano a multi-nugget blockchain. In doing so, the blockchain became compatible with host projects involved in the emerging decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible tokens (NFTs) infinite.

The update, which went alive on March one, was followed upward with some other hard fork in July, called "Shelley." The new mainnet introduced Cardano'due south proposed proof-of-pale layer, allowing users to contribute to the transaction validation procedure either directly (past operating a stake puddle) or indirectly (via delegation) in exchange for staking rewards.

ADA daily price nautical chart. Source: TradingView

But despite solid fundamentals, ADA/USD surged a mere xix.21% during the second quarter, partly due to Red china'south crackdown on its regional cryptocurrency industry and Tesla CEO Elon Musk'due south anti-Bitcoin (BTC) tweets.

Related: Cardano chalks a bearish wedge equally ADA toll soars past over 100% in Q3

Yet, the Cardano UTXO count kept surging during the second quarter's turbulence in the crypto market. It topped out at two.93 million on July 26, when ADA was changing hands for $1.25.

Smart contracts

The third quarter has witnessed Cardano finalizing its plans to become a smart contract platform similar to Ethereum via its so-called "Alonzo" upgrade. Every bit a result, speculative bids for ADA, alongside investors' hodling sentiment, take surged.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer and do non necessarily reverberate the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and you should bear your own research when making a conclusion.