This is why LDO whales are outpacing retail traders despite holding at a loss

• Only 13% of LDO supply accounted for retail holdings.
• Despite increased whale transactions, the number of large holders decreased.

According to IntoTheBlock data, crypto whales have an incredible hold of the entire token concentration of Lido Finance [LDO]. As of this writing, 87% of the supply was in the possession of large holders.

How much are 1,10,100 LDOs worth today?

Deep pockets in control

Interestingly, this happened despite the fact that more holders were in loss as compared to those in gains. An instance like this could suggest that the large holders consider LDO extremely undervalued.

Source: IntoTheBlock

However, it did not just end there. It was worthy of note to point out that 66% of the entire holding cohort occurred in the last 365 days. And the reason could be connected to Lido’s rise to prominence in 2022 which led to a negative correlation with the Bitcoin [BTC] price.

Another factor worthy of mention is the liquid staking project’s contribution to the activity on the Ethereum [ETH] blockchain. More so, Lido’s introduction of its V2 has been laced with additional upgrades that might have influenced whales’ increased transactions.

Out of the $193.11 million large transactions in the last seven days, quite a number of them have been withdrawals.

Another whale withdrew 641,841 $LDO ($1.4M) from #Binance just now.https://t.co/nySmA6Ymklhttps://t.co/TcfVfWTPXT pic.twitter.com/0llFHKhVC5

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) May 16, 2023

Thus, implying that accumulation by whales might not align with short-term objectives. But based on Santiment’s data, the rate at which these transactions occurred had reduced. Hence, there might be no cause to panic about increased selling pressure. 

Source: Santiment

Peddling the token in small numbers

For retail, it hasn’t been a walk in the park. However, on-chain data showed that most holders with 0 to 100 tokens joined whales in the accumulation hunt. However, not every group out of the lot participated. 

For instance, the 10 to 100 group resisted intense load-up. Nevertheless, the widespread conglomeration proved that the belief in the LDO token was high relative to others. 

Source: Santiment

But have there been new members of the LDO whale family? To evaluate this, the focus will be on the supply distribution based on the number of addresses. 

Read Lido DAO’s [LDO] Price Prediction 2023-2024

According to Santiment data, not much has happened with this metric. At press time, the 10 million to 100 million cohort flatlined since 10 May. 

This implied that the number of whales in the group remained almost the same since the aforementioned date. But for most of the other groups, the address count witnessed a decrease.

Source: Santiment

Meanwhile, LDO’s price at press time had reduced by 1.83% in the last 24 hours. At a price of $2.07, the market cap inched closer to $2 billion