Large holders of Cardano (ADA) (otherwise known as whales) have increased their holdings of the digital asset since the start of this month. Their actions are a sign of massive confidence in the cryptocurrency's potential. According to TapTools, a Cardano analytics account on X, these investors have added more than 420 million ADA tokens to their wallets, a sign of optimism about the network and its native token. This accumulation represents an investment of about $289 million based on ADA's current price. Following the additional purchases, the ADA tokens held by these influential investors have risen from 12.47 billion to 12.89 billion. Hence, crypto traders continue to monitor ADA price to see how it reacts to these accumulations. There are various reasons why whales are increasing their ADA holdings. One major reason is that the Cardano ecosystem has experienced continuous significant developments lately. The network has also made efforts to improve scalability, interoperability, and sustainability. These developments and upcoming upgrades must have given these large investors additional confidence to increase their ADA holdings. In addition, there have been positive trends in the broader cryptocurrency market, which could further encourage these whales. As is usually the case, the continuous accumulation of an asset by whales causes a reduction in the asset's supply on exchanges. Hence, the price could rise higher as demand increases. Besides whale accumulations, other favorable factors that can also cause ADA's price to rise include regulatory developments and ecosystem updates. For instance, Cardano's use cases continue to expand while the developers improve its technology. Cardano ecosystem grows, challenges rivals Meanwhile, the Cardano analytics platform also revealed that the blockchain now has various applications and services that compete favorably with those of the more established networks, especially Ethereum and Solana. Some of those applications include decentralized finance (DeFi) and decentralized physical infrastructure (DePin). The platform also claimed that "Cardano has no failed transactions." This claim would be a huge selling point for users and developers who prefer blockchains with a stable network. It is likely that as blockchain technology evolves, competition between Cardano and other platforms such as Ethereum and Solana will become stronger. ADA currently trades at $0.6892, down 2.2% over the past 24 hours.