AAVE, one of the most prominent DeFi tokens, is currently experiencing a market pump, gaining 28.33% in the past 7 days, according to CoinMarketCap data.
Over the past week, most of the crypto market has seen a price surge following the Bitcoin-driven recovery, with the leading cryptocurrency also trading above $31,000 for the first time since June 2022.
AAVE Price overview
AAVE started trading around $50.99 last week before posting some steady gains throughout the week, leading the DeFi token to close its weekly market at a price of $56.86.
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That said, yesterday, June 25, the AAVE coin experienced a massive price surge, propelling the token by 32% to trade as low as $75.06 for the first time since last month.
While the token has since fallen from this price point, AAVE seems to have found some stability and could be preparing for another breakout.
At the time of writing, AAVE is trading hands at USD 65.4, up 0.67% in the past hour. Meanwhile, the token’s daily trading volume stands at $406 million, up 1.85% in the past 24 hours.
In addition, AAVE has a total market cap of approximately $942 million, making it the 44th largest cryptocurrency in the market.
AAVE Trading At $65.88 | Source: AAVEUSD Chart On Tradingview.com
Behind the AAVE Rise
Following AAVE’s recent price increase, there has been much speculation about the driving force behind this bullish move. According to on-chain analytics firm Lookonchain, the rise in AAVE’s market price appears to be due to massive whale activity by an investor with portfolio address “0x5a80” on the last day.
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Via a post on their official Twitter account, Lookonchain reported that Whale “0x5a80” started acquiring huge amounts of the DeFi token in the wee hours of yesterday. The individual purchased 182,152 AAVE – worth $13.2 million at the time – within the space of 5 hours.
Looking at data from CoinMarketCap, Lookonchain concluded that this massive whale activity coincided with the period when AAVE’s market value surge began yesterday.
From this morning also the blockchain data platform reported that the whale “0x5a80” had acquired a total of 257,147 AAVE tokens – then worth $17.2 million – in the past 24 hours. Before they end their buying spree, whale “0x5a80” is believed to hold an estimated 474,579 AAVE tokens – worth $31.8 million.
However, since whale “0x5a80” stopped collecting AAVE, the token’s market price has taken a nosedive, losing nearly 13% of its value in the past 8 hours.
That being said, several AAVE investors will likely be on the lookout for the actions of the “0x5a80” whale in the coming days, as it could be critical to the token’s future price movements.
Featured image: Getty Images/istockphotos, chart from Tradingview