• Despite the crypto market losing over $300 billion in August, whales are betting on a rebound and accumulating tokens like Toncoin, Uniswap, and Lido DAO.
• Toncoin dipped after the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov, but whales took the opportunity to boost their holdings, with large holders surging over 300%.

August was an underwhelming month for crypto. The overall market cap dipped by $600 billion to hit a low of $1.8 trillion in early August before slowly recovering to clock $2.13 trillion at press time for a $300 billion dip on the monthly timeline. All top ten cryptos dipped, except for TRON which gained 16% in that time. Dogecoin, Solana and Ethereum all lost over 20%, while Bitcoin, Cardano, and Avalanche each lost around 10%.

But downturns in crypto always present a market opportunity to accumulate undervalued tokens, and crypto whales have been busy. On-chain data shows that these large holders have especially clamored around three tokens: Toncoin, Uniswap, and Lido DAO.

The Tokens for September

Toncoin was one of this year’s better performers and is the highest gainer in the top 25 coins. However, it has dipped over 18% in the past month to trade at $5.5 at press time.

The token was especially hit by the arrest of Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of Telegram, the instant messaging app linked to the project. Durov was arrested in France and was accused of being complacent in the use of Telegram to spread child pornography, fraud, and other illegal messages and documents. He was released shortly after for $5.5 million in bail.

Durov’s arrest has sparked outrage globally from those opposed to censorship. Even the crypto community has rallied behind Durov, with Justin Sun pledging $1 million to assist him, as we reported.

Toncoin bore the brunt of the arrest. It shed $2.7 billion on the day of his arrest and in the past week, has lost 16%. However, data from IntoTheBlock shows that TON whales tripled their tokens and are backing it to make a rebound post-Durov saga, as shown in the graph below.

While the large addresses can’t move the market on their own, they have a massive influence on retail traders. In the past two days, the number of TON tokens in retail addresses shot up from 438 million to 591 million, a new all-time high.

Besides TON, the whales are also accumulating Uniswap, which trades at $5.95 at press time, gaining 4% in the past day for a $3.582 billion market cap.

In August, UNI lost 23%, which makes it one of the more undervalued coins. Data from Santiment shows that its market value to realized value (MVRV) ratio has slipped to the negative scale. This shows that a token is trading for a lower price than the average price of all the tokens, offering a prime buying opportunity. Whales are jumping onto this opportunity; the number of addresses holding between 1,000 and 1 million UNI tokens has now reached its highest since January.