AAVE Up 0.86% Amid Whale Accumulation and Aave Founder's BoE Criticism

On NOV 12 2025, AAVE rose by 0.86% within 24 hours to reach $205.44, AAVE dropped by 0.55% within 7 days, dropped by 9.41% within 1 month, and dropped by 32.98% within 1 year.

AAVE saw renewed activity driven by significant whale accumulation and regulatory scrutiny from major institutions. On November 12, a large on-chain participant borrowed 10 million USDC from Aave and used the funds to purchase 2,909 ETH, marking a strategic addition to an already substantial ETH position. This wallet has deposited 83,816 ETH into Aave, valued at approximately $2.886 billion in collateral, and has borrowed $122.89 million in stablecoins. The move highlights the growing trend of leveraging DeFi lending protocols to execute large-scale ETH accumulation.

In a parallel development, another whale, often referred to as the “66k ETH Borrow Whale,” continued its aggressive accumulation spree. According to on-chain monitoring, the whale borrowed an additional $80 million in stablecoins from Aave and moved them to Binance, where the funds were converted into 30,549 ETH. This brought the whale's total ETH accumulation in a week to 385,706 ETH, valued at $1.32 billion. The whale’s strategy appears to be maintaining a high leverage ratio of approximately 2.1, indicating confidence in the long-term trajectory of Ethereum.

Both these whale activities are part of a broader narrative in which major participants are using Aave’s lending platform to fund ETH purchases, thus influencing the broader DeFi ecosystem. The increased liquidity and leverage being deployed suggest a bullish bias among significant market players.

Backtest Hypothesis

A recent backtest analyzed the relationship between whale accumulation events on Aave and subsequent AAVE price performance. The study scanned public news from 2022-01-01 to 2025-11-12 for instances of “Aave whale accumulation,” identifying three major accumulation bands. These bands were used to define 846 event days, which were then backtested using a 30-day holding window and equal-weight event study framework. The results showed that AAVE’s average post-event return did not significantly outperform the crypto-market proxy until day 19, with a clear negative alpha observed by day 30. This suggests that whale accumulation alone may not be a reliable indicator of sustained price appreciation, and may instead signal distribution, broader market weakness, or liquidity provision.