With Bitcoin (BTC) nearly hitting the $100,000 mark for the first time, the altcoin season is becoming a reality. This BTC at 100K buzz has made Cardano (ADA) hit its two and two-and-a-half year-high point as crypto whales started accumulating the token.

As the market opened on Friday, November 22, Cardano witnessed a 10% price gain over the last 24 hours to trade at 90 cents.

The ADA tokens listed the highest price since May 2022 in major crypto exchanges like Coinbase on Friday. This meant a 152% month-to-date price spike while it surged 22% over the week.

This price rally turned Cardano the 10th largest cryptocurrency by market cap as it reached $30.85 billion in market capitalization.

Compared to ADA, the crypto market made a 14% price surge this week and the monthly gain of the market was 58%.

This ADA price rally is happening because of crypto whales continuing with their massive accumulation of the altcoin with more wallet addresses gathering over $10 million worth of tokens. At present, crypto whales have more than $12 billion worth of ADA holdings.

The on-chain activity of Cardano confirmed this surge in whale activity and increased involvement of institutional investors which suggests that this rally has a staying power.

Meanwhile, analytics firm IntoTheBlock revealed large transactions with ADA tokens have increased 300% in the past two weeks.

This shows heightened institutional investors' interest with some of it driven by Charles Hoskison's possible role in shaping up US crypto policies under the Trump administration.

At the time of writing, ADA was trading at $0.9845, up 23.61% in the last 24 hours while the trading volume rose by 114.65% to be at $5.38 billion and the market cap increased to $34.43 billion.