BTC holders enjoy the most gains, while ADA holders struggle to maintain faith

According to Santiment, an on-chain and market analytics platform for cryptocurrencies, close to 95% of all the BTC in circulation is in profit. The leading crypto by market cap holds almost a 50 percentage point lead over Cardano (ADA) at 46.5%, which occupied the sixth spot in terms of market cap rankings. 

Santiment shared a chart that tracks the “Percent of Total Supply in Profit” for the six top-cap cryptocurrencies over time.

The report pointed out the significant contrast between BTC and ADA based on the percentage of their circulating supply that is presently in profit, while revealing how their holders are doing.

BTC holders enjoy the most gains, while ADA holders struggle to maintain faith

Santiment’s post was based on a metric that tracks the percentage of each asset’s circulating supply currently held at a profit. In the report, it means that the market price is higher than the average on-chain acquisition price.

As of the latest data point, BTC reportedly boasts a high percentage of 94.5%, suggesting that most of its holders are seeing gains. In contrast, Cardano had a lower rate (46.5%), indicating that a majority of its holders are at a loss as they bought at a higher price than where ADA sits currently.

Despite the gloomy performance, Santiment believes Cardano’s current position potentially signals undervaluation and room for growth, especially if crypto witnesses another bull cycle later this year.

Other tokens that boasted strong investor gains include $ETH at 88.7%, $XRP at 65.1%, $DOGE at 64.7%, and $LINK at 59.4%.

According to Santiment, when roughly 19 out of every 20 coins are in profit like this, strong market confidence typically follows. However, it also suggests that there’s a greater risk of profit-taking and corrections.

There is also a chance for coins with a low percent of supply in profit, like ADA and LINK, to appeal to contrarian or long-term investors in the market for assets yet to experience a strong rally in recent times.

Cardano slowly trudging towards long-term adoption

While it is clear Cardano is the worst performing token among the six top-cap cryptocurrencies over time, Santiment sees future potential and for good reason.

After all, Cardano’s current “bad” performance can likely be attributed to a combination of bearish sentiment from jaded investors who bought at higher prices, competitive pressures, and a lack of immediate market catalysts.

In truth, despite its current position, Cardano has boasted steady development progress and is not necessarily doing badly in terms of its technology or community, but rather struggling in the current market context.

What’s going down on Cardano?

Check out this week’s development update on Essential Cardano and stay abreast of all the latest developments in core technology, wallets and services, smart contracts, and scaling and governance. https://t.co/8h3uOmSW76 pic.twitter.com/CPKjFJwELb

— Input Output (@InputOutputHK) June 20, 2025

Last month, Cardano released node v.10.4.1 which introduced the UTXO-HD (Unspent Transaction Output – High Density) feature, touted as a significant technical advancement for the Cardano blockchain.

The feature enhances Cardano’s Extended UTXO (EUTXO) model, the core accounting system used by the blockchain to track unspent transaction outputs and unlike traditional UTXO models like Bitcoin, the EUTXO supports smart contracts and complex transaction logic without compromising on security and predictability.

This is so dumb. Projects should keep 18-36 months of post kill list runway in short term tbills but that’s about it. Why would anyone want a team to buy and hold bitcoin for them when they can do it themselves? Why pay for all those coconuts.

— toly 🇺🇸 (@aeyakovenko) June 16, 2025

Cardano’s founder, Charles Hoskinson recently drew criticism from Solana Labs’ CEO for proposing to add BTC to the project’s treasury, an initiative that was meant to boost’s the project’s profitability.

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