Whales Control More of DeFi Than You Think
(And they’re better at the game.)

DeFi sells a powerful narrative: open, permissionless, and fair. Anyone with a wallet can participate. No gatekeepers. No middlemen. Just code.

But beneath that ideal lies a quieter reality—one where a relatively small group of high-capital players, known as whales, exert outsized influence over markets, governance, and even protocol design.

It’s not exactly a conspiracy. It’s just math… and a lot of money.

Who Are the Whales?

In traditional finance, they’d be hedge funds, market makers, or ultra-high-net-worth individuals. In DeFi, they’re wallet addresses holding massive amounts of capital—often early adopters, crypto-native funds, or insiders who got in before things were cool.

While retail users are debating APRs on Twitter, whales are moving liquidity across protocols like chess pieces—strategically, quietly, and with a level of coordination that’s hard to track in real time.

Liquidity Is Power

In DeFi, liquidity isn’t just participation—it’s control.

Protocols rely on liquidity pools to function. The deeper the pool, the better the trading experience. But here’s the catch: whales provide a significant chunk of that liquidity.

That gives them leverage:

• They can move markets by adding or removing liquidity.
• They can farm incentives efficiently, capturing the majority of rewards.
• They can influence token price stability just by repositioning funds.

When a whale exits a pool, it’s not just a withdrawal—it’s a shockwave.

Governance: One Token, One Vote… Sort Of

On paper, DeFi governance is democratic. In reality, it’s closer to shareholder capitalism.

Voting power is typically proportional to token holdings. So when whales hold a large percentage of governance tokens, they effectively steer protocol decisions.

That includes:

• Emissions schedules
• Treasury allocations
• Protocol upgrades
• Incentive structures

Retail users can vote—but whales decide.

And if you’ve ever wondered why some proposals seem oddly favorable to large holders… well, now you know.

The Strategy Gap

It’s not just about capital. Whales are better at the game.

They have:

• Access to private deal flow (early token allocations, OTC trades)
• Custom tools and bots for execution and monitoring
• Teams and analysts tracking opportunities across chains
• Risk management frameworks that go beyond “ape and pray.”

While retail users chase yield, whales engineer it.

They hedge positions, loop strategies, and optimize gas like it’s a competitive sport. By the time a “hot opportunity” hits Crypto Twitter, whales have already extracted most of the value.

Incentives Are Designed Around Them

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: many DeFi protocols need whales.

High TVL looks good. Deep liquidity attracts users. Large holders stabilize ecosystems—until they don’t.

So protocols often design incentives that naturally favor bigger players:

• Tiered rewards
• Volume-based perks
• Early access programs
• Governance influence

It’s not malicious—it’s survival. But it does tilt the playing field.

So, Where Does That Leave Retail?

At a disadvantage? Yes. Completely powerless? Not quite.

Retail users still have advantages:

• Agility – You can enter and exit positions faster without moving markets.
• Narrative awareness – You’re often closer to emerging trends and communities.
• Lower expectations – You don’t need to deploy millions to win.

The key is understanding the game you’re in.

Stop assuming DeFi is a level playing field. It isn’t. But that doesn’t mean you can’t play smart.

Playing Smarter in a Whale’s Ocean

If whales dominate through capital and strategy, retail wins through awareness and timing.

A few mindset shifts:

• Follow liquidity, not hype
• Watch wallet movements, not influencer threads
• Prioritize sustainability over short-term APY
• Assume you’re late—and act accordingly

And most importantly: don’t confuse accessibility with equality.

Final Reflections

DeFi didn’t eliminate power dynamics—it just made them more transparent (if you know where to look).

Whales aren’t villains. They’re just better-equipped players operating in a system that rewards scale, speed, and strategy.

The real edge isn’t pretending they don’t exist.

It’s learning how they move—and positioning yourself before the splash hits.

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Prediction markets are exciting, but they’re not reliable wealth builders for retail users.

Research by Citizens shows that retail prediction market users are losing more money than legal sports bettors, with the sharpest traders and market makers capturing returns on the other side of their flow which. The research note also reveals the platforms are drawing a younger demographic than traditional sportsbooks.

The median return for a prediction market user was -8% from July 2025 through mid-March, compared with -5% for sports book users over the same period, Citizens JMP Securities analyst Jordan Bender wrote, citing transaction data from analytics company Juice Reel.

Individuals trading more than $500,000 on prediction markets generated a median ROI of +2.6%, consistent with sharp-bettor benchmarks validated by professional players. Every cohort below that level was negative, sliding to -26.8% for users trading less than $100.

No cohort within legal sports betting was profitable either, but the decay is less severe: the $500,000-plus sports betting cohort posted -0.6%, and the smallest accounts came in at -29.3%.

One of the major differences between the two platforms is who is on the other side of the trade.

Prediction markets do not limit or ban profitable users the way regulated sportsbooks do, concentrating informed flow on the platforms. That flips the traditional model. In sportsbooks, the house manages risk and filters out winning players. In prediction markets, retail traders are directly exposed to professionals, market makers, and high-volume participants who consistently take the other side of less informed flow.

Two professional bettors on a Citizens JMP call last week said prediction markets offer a more attractive path to positive returns precisely because retail users provide the liquidity, the note reads.

Are prediction markets a threat to online gambling?

Gaming CEOs have dismissed the threat of prediction markets, according to the Citizens JMP report, which compiled executive commentary from 4Q25 earnings calls.

DraftKings’ Jason Robins said prediction markets are not materially incremental to existing customers. Flutter’s Peter Jackson said the company found no evidence of material cannibalization. BetMGM’s Adam Greenblat estimated a low-to-mid-single-digit percentage impact on betting revenue. Citizens JMP’s own estimate is around 5%.

The bigger issue may not be cannibalization but acquisition. About 24% of Kalshi users are under 25, with a median age of 31, compared with just 7% for DraftKings and FanDuel, where the median age is closer to 35, according to Sensor Tower data cited in the report. Roughly 90% of DraftKings revenue comes from users over 30, the report said.

FanDuel and DraftKings downloads fell 18% and 13% year-over-year from September 2025 through February 2026, per Sensor Tower data cited by Citizens JMP. Over the same stretch, Kalshi logged 6.3 million downloads.

Prediction markets may not be pulling existing sportsbook users away. They may be intercepting the next generation before they ever download DraftKings.

Whales Control More of DeFi Than You Think
(And they’re better at the game.)

DeFi sells a powerful narrative: open, permissionless, and fair. Anyone with a wallet can participate. No gatekeepers. No middlemen. Just code.

But beneath that ideal lies a quieter reality—one where a relatively small group of high-capital players, known as whales, exert outsized influence over markets, governance, and even protocol design.

It’s not exactly a conspiracy. It’s just math… and a lot of money.

Who Are the Whales?

In traditional finance, they’d be hedge funds, market makers, or ultra-high-net-worth individuals. In DeFi, they’re wallet addresses holding massive amounts of capital—often early adopters, crypto-native funds, or insiders who got in before things were cool.

While retail users are debating APRs on Twitter, whales are moving liquidity across protocols like chess pieces—strategically, quietly, and with a level of coordination that’s hard to track in real time.

Liquidity Is Power

In DeFi, liquidity isn’t just participation—it’s control.

Protocols rely on liquidity pools to function. The deeper the pool, the better the trading experience. But here’s the catch: whales provide a significant chunk of that liquidity.

That gives them leverage:

• They can move markets by adding or removing liquidity.
• They can farm incentives efficiently, capturing the majority of rewards.
• They can influence token price stability just by repositioning funds.

When a whale exits a pool, it’s not just a withdrawal—it’s a shockwave.

Governance: One Token, One Vote… Sort Of

On paper, DeFi governance is democratic. In reality, it’s closer to shareholder capitalism.

Voting power is typically proportional to token holdings. So when whales hold a large percentage of governance tokens, they effectively steer protocol decisions.

That includes:

• Emissions schedules
• Treasury allocations
• Protocol upgrades
• Incentive structures

Retail users can vote—but whales decide.

And if you’ve ever wondered why some proposals seem oddly favorable to large holders… well, now you know.

The Strategy Gap

It’s not just about capital. Whales are better at the game.

They have:

• Access to private deal flow (early token allocations, OTC trades)
• Custom tools and bots for execution and monitoring
• Teams and analysts tracking opportunities across chains
• Risk management frameworks that go beyond “ape and pray.”

While retail users chase yield, whales engineer it.

They hedge positions, loop strategies, and optimize gas like it’s a competitive sport. By the time a “hot opportunity” hits Crypto Twitter, whales have already extracted most of the value.

Incentives Are Designed Around Them

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: many DeFi protocols need whales.

High TVL looks good. Deep liquidity attracts users. Large holders stabilize ecosystems—until they don’t.

So protocols often design incentives that naturally favor bigger players:

• Tiered rewards
• Volume-based perks
• Early access programs
• Governance influence

It’s not malicious—it’s survival. But it does tilt the playing field.

So, Where Does That Leave Retail?

At a disadvantage? Yes. Completely powerless? Not quite.

Retail users still have advantages:

• Agility – You can enter and exit positions faster without moving markets.
• Narrative awareness – You’re often closer to emerging trends and communities.
• Lower expectations – You don’t need to deploy millions to win.

The key is understanding the game you’re in.

Stop assuming DeFi is a level playing field. It isn’t. But that doesn’t mean you can’t play smart.

Playing Smarter in a Whale’s Ocean

If whales dominate through capital and strategy, retail wins through awareness and timing.

A few mindset shifts:

• Follow liquidity, not hype
• Watch wallet movements, not influencer threads
• Prioritize sustainability over short-term APY
• Assume you’re late—and act accordingly

And most importantly: don’t confuse accessibility with equality.

Final Reflections

DeFi didn’t eliminate power dynamics—it just made them more transparent (if you know where to look).

Whales aren’t villains. They’re just better-equipped players operating in a system that rewards scale, speed, and strategy.

The real edge isn’t pretending they don’t exist.

It’s learning how they move—and positioning yourself before the splash hits.

REQUEST AN ARTICLE

Ripple is testing whether its stablecoin can replace the manual payment processes that have slowed cross-border trade for decades, and Singapore’s central bank is giving it a sandbox to prove it.

The company said in a note shared with CoinDesk on Wednesday that it is participating in BLOOM, a Monetary Authority of Singapore initiative designed to extend settlement capabilities for tokenized bank liabilities and regulated stablecoins.

As part of the plan, Ripple is partnering with Unloq, a supply chain finance technology provider, to pilot a system where cross-border trade payments using RLUSD are released automatically when predefined conditions are met, such as shipment verification.

Traditional trade finance is built on layers of manual verification, documentary credits, and correspondent banking relationships that can take days or weeks to settle. The Ripple-Unloq pilot uses Unloq’s SC+ platform to bundle trade obligations, settlement conditions, and financing workflows into a single execution layer, with RLUSD on the XRP Ledger handling the actual money movement.

Singapore has positioned itself as the regulatory testing ground for institutional digital asset use cases, and BLOOM specifically targets the infrastructure layer rather than speculative products.

Getting into the program signals that MAS considers the RLUSD-on-XRPL stack credible enough for regulated experimentation, which matters more for Ripple’s enterprise pipeline than another exchange listing or payments corridor ever could.

This is the third significant Ripple announcement in three weeks.

The company expanded Ripple Payments into a full-stack stablecoin infrastructure platform, secured an Australian financial services license through acquisition, and now has a central bank-backed pilot for trade finance.

Ripple is building the regulatory and institutional credibility layer that turns RLUSD from a stablecoin with modest adoption into the settlement asset for enterprise use cases that require compliance and programmability.

The average Cardano holder who bought in the past year is down 43%. The derivatives market is betting it gets worse. But both of those things happening at once have historically meant the opposite.

Santiment data shows ADA’s 365-day Market Value to Realized Value (MVRV) ratio has fallen to -43%, meaning wallets that have been active on the Cardano network over the past year are sitting on an average loss of 43% on their positions.

The metric is deep in what Santiment labels the “opportunity zone,” a band that previous instances in 2023 and late 2024 preceded recoveries as the MVRV mean-reverts toward zero.

MVRV measures average trading returns across a given timeframe, and it always gravitates back toward zero over time. When it’s extremely negative, the holders most likely to panic-sell have already sold. The remaining supply sits in hands that are either committed to holding or have already accepted the loss. That’s the kind of positioning that reduces further selling pressure and sets up the conditions for a bounce when any catalyst arrives.

At the same time, Binance’s weekly average funding rate for ADA has turned to its most negative reading since June 2023. Funding rates reflect the balance between long and short positioning in perpetual futures. A deeply negative rate means shorts are dominant and paying longs to keep their positions open. In simpler terms, the derivatives market is crowded on the bearish side.

That crowding is what makes it a contrarian signal. When shorts are this concentrated, any positive price movement triggers liquidations that force short sellers to buy back their positions, which pushes the price higher, which triggers more liquidations.

The cascade works in reverse too, but the historical pattern on ADA shows that funding rate extremes of this magnitude have preceded short squeezes more often than they’ve preceded further declines.

The last time both signals aligned this clearly was mid-2023, when ADA was trading around $0.25 before rallying roughly 300% over the following 18 months. That doesn’t mean the same outcome is guaranteed, however, as ADA is down 71% since its September peak, the broader market is dealing with a war, sticky inflation, and no rate cuts in sight, and Cardano’s ecosystem metrics haven’t produced the kind of usage growth that would justify a fundamental repricing.

But bottom signals aren’t about fundamentals. They’re about positioning. And the positioning on Cardano right now, with average holders at -43% returns and shorts at a three-year high, is the kind of setup where the next move catches the majority off guard.

ADA was trading at $0.26 on Tuesday, down roughly 7% on the week.

XRP is holding near $1.41 after a steady session, but price is stuck in a tight range, with neither buyers nor sellers taking control. The longer it stays compressed between support and resistance, the more likely a sharper move becomes.

News Background

• XRP traded in line with the broader crypto market, with no major token-specific catalyst driving price action.
• Whale wallets added roughly 40 million XRP over the past week, suggesting accumulation during consolidation.
• Market sentiment remains tied to macro conditions, with crypto reacting cautiously to interest rate expectations.

Price Action Summary

• XRP gained about 0.6%, moving from roughly $1.38 to $1.41
• Price traded within a tight $1.38–$1.43 range
• Repeated rejection near $1.42 capped upside
• Buyers defended dips near $1.38, forming higher lows

Technical Analysis

• XRP is trading in a tightening range, with support near $1.38 and resistance around $1.42.
• Higher lows suggest buyers are slowly stepping in, but lack of strong follow-through keeps momentum muted.
• The structure resembles a compression setup, where price coils before a larger move.
• Volume is slightly elevated but not strong enough yet to confirm a breakout.

What traders say is next?

• Traders are watching a break above $1.42 for a move toward $1.45–$1.50.
• If $1.38 support fails, downside could extend toward $1.30.
• For now, XRP remains range-bound, with the next move likely driven by a break on either side of this tightening range.

Stock and crypto trading platform Robinhood has approved to buy back $1.5 billion worth of its shares.

Robinhood said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Tuesday that the company’s board of directors approved the $1.5 billion share repurchase program, which it will carry out over the next three years.

The program includes $1.1 billion in new incremental capacity, with the remainder rolled over from an older repurchase program.

“Robinhood is a generational company with a massive long-term opportunity,” Robinhood financial chief Shiv Verma said in a statement. “This authorization reflects the confidence of our management team and board in our ability to continue delivering innovative products for customers and creating value for shareholders while returning capital over time.”

The stock buyback, typically seen as signaling that a company believes its stock is undervalued, comes as shares in Robinhood (HOOD) have struggled so far this year amid a broad downturn in stocks and crypto.

Robinhood also said that its subsidiary, Robinhood Securities, entered a $3.25 billion revolving credit facility with JPMorgan Chase, replacing the prior $2.65 billion facility. It can expand by up to $1.62 billion, bringing the maximum credit to $4.87 billion. 

Robinhood stock tanks nearly 5%

Shares in Robinhood ended trading on Tuesday, down 4.7% to $69.08, closing at the lowest level this year. The stock slightly recovered to $70.90 after hours.

Robinhood’s stock is down almost 39% so far this year and has lost 54.7% since its October all-time high of $152.46, as broader macroeconomic concerns and the Iran war impact stocks.

However, Robinhood’s share price over the past 12 months has seen it gain nearly 43% as its expanded into other products such as prediction markets and banking.

Analyst sentiment aggregator TipRanks puts the 12-month average Robinhood stock price forecast at $123.85 and agrees that the stock is a “strong buy” based on 16 Wall Street analysts.

Related: SEC gives go-ahead to Nasdaq for tokenized trading trial

Robinhood Chain to launch this year 

Despite its share price woes, Robinhood remains committed to crypto and real-world asset tokenization, launching its own Ethereum layer-2 network to testnet in February.

CEO Vlad Tenev said that the network processed 4 million transactions in its first week of public testnet activity.

Robinhood Chain is designed to support tokenized equities, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and other traditional financial instruments, and the mainnet launch is planned for later this year.

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