AAVE up over 30% in past week as whale activity intensifies

AAVE, the native token of decentralized lending platform Aave, has caught the attention of whales as the token’s price has increased by over 30% in the past week.

At press time, Aave (AAVE) is the 44th largest cryptocurrency, up from 47th place on August 20. The token’s market cap has surpassed $2 billion and is up more than 3% in the past 24 hours.

According to price data from Crypto.news, AAVE was trading at $137.64, down from its weekly high of $142.16 reached on Aug. 22. The token is up 30.9% in the past week and over 47.7% in the past 30 days. Despite the recent rally, the token is still 79.2% off its all-time high of $661.69 reached in May 2021.

This increase has been fueled primarily by intense whale activity recorded over the past week. Most recently, on August 22, Lookonchain data revealed that a whale collected approximately $10.4 million worth of AAVE for 4,000 staked Ethereum (ETH) in less than 24 hours.

This major purchase was preceded by notable whale activity on August 20. Two whales purchased $3.92 million worth of AAVE, and the following day another major investor joined the trend by investing $6.65 million in the token.

Looking at data from IntoTheBlock, whales, who hold more than 1% of Aave’s circulating supply, control 59.43% of AAVE’s total supply. The high concentration of whales suggests that the token’s price is influenced by these large holders.

AAVE concentration graph | Source: IntoTheBlock

Other data showing a significant increase in inflows and outflows into AAVE among large investors shows that inflows have increased by 90.37% and outflows by 95.79% in the last seven days.

However, during the same period, AAVE net flow among large investors increased by 364.73%, indicating that buying interest currently prevails and is contributing to the upward momentum in AAVE’s price.

AAVE is currently in the overbought territory AAVE price, MACD and RSI chart – August 22 | Source: crypto.news

On the 4-hour candlestick chart of AAVE/USDT, the Relative Strength Index is at 73.93, which suggests that the token is currently overbought. However, the Moving Average Convergence Divergence suggests that bullish momentum is still in play, with the MACD line remaining above the signal line with positive histogram bars.

This likely means that while AAVE is overbought, the upward momentum supported by whale buying could continue for a bit longer. However, overbought conditions usually precede a price correction or consolidation phase, so investors could be looking to take some profits in the short term.