Key takeaways
Did ASTER’s 27% Rally Signal a New Bull Run?
The ASTER rally was a classic volatility play fueled by smart money buying the CZ bomb, shorting the top and profiting on both sides.
How did the whales react after the rally?
The largest cohorts scaled up and dumped around 10 million tokens from their 80 million stack, turning the move into a coordinated profit cycle.
Aster [ASTER] The whales played the volatility perfectly once again.
After a month of sideways declines, the altcoin soared 27% on November 2, recovering all losses from the previous week and surpassing $1.25. With the market tilted towards risk aversion, could this have been a hedging move?
Not quite. The breakout was fueled by CZ’s revelation about X, showing that he has 2.09 million ASTER bought around $0.91. This came right after the panic caused by CZ liquidation rumors that sent the media into a frenzy.
Source: X
In short, CZ’s release restored investor confidence.
The chain data shows that the superior cohort of ASTER whaleswhich controls 30% of the total supply, rose again during the rally. They accumulated 80 million new tokens, increasing their total holdings from 30.62% to 31.62%.
And yet, ASTER’s 27% move seems more psychological than structural.
Immediately after publication, ASTER’s open interest (OI) skyrocketed by $323 million, showing that new leverage was flooding.
However, the whales’ positions remained short. Could this divergence be hinting that there is something deeper at play?
Whales take advantage of ASTER’s wild swings
ASTER’s 15% intraday drop looks like a coordinated whale move.
String data has been marked as heavy short positioning right after the CZ release, with several large portfolios turning bearish. One prominent address opened a $15 million triple short position, with the liquidation level set at $2.11.
In simple terms, the big players were betting on a setback. Now that ASTER is down 15%, the same wallet (0xbadb) is sitting around $1.4 million in unrealized PnL, while another whale is up almost $5.9 million.
Source: Sentiment
In short, whales profited greatly from ASTER’s volatility.
But as the chart shows, this wasn’t just a lucky exit. The major cohorts of whales have been lightening their purses, with the dominant group dumping around 10 million tokens out of the 80 million they previously stacked.
Given this setup, ASTER’s 15% drop looks like a clean feedback loop.
Simply put, the smart money bought the post-CZ bomb, shortened the topand sold to landfill. They made profits on both sides of the play, turning volatility into opportunity.
In turn, making ASTER’s 27% rally look like a textbook volatility play, not the start of a true bull run.
