Whales Bought 360 Million XRP Amid Recent 12% Price Drop

XRP might have plummeted by 12% over the past week, but whale addresses have leveraged this opportunity to amass over 360 million XRP tokens.

XRP is facing one of the least favorable months of the year, having recently succumbed to bearish pressure. Amid this situation, the asset dropped by 12% from June 22 to 28, triggering an accumulation spree from whales who have purchased a staggering 360 million XRP since then.

Prominent chartist Ali Martinez first drew attention to this development in a tweet today. Citing data from the behavior analytics platform Santiment, Ali highlighted that whales holding 10 million to 100 million XRP procured 360 million XRP over the past week.

#Ripple whales bought the dip!

While the price of #XRP dropped 12% from June 22 to June 28, whales bought 360 million $XRP worth nearly $170 million. pic.twitter.com/QI0m45cIio

— Ali (@ali_charts) June 29, 2023

A close look at the balances of these whale addresses substantiates this claim. Per Santiment data, the cumulative balance of these addresses stood at 4.50 billion XRP as of June 23. Data from Ali’s screenshot shows that this value recently increased to 4.86 billion XRP.

This upswing represents a surge in balance by up to 360 million XRP valued at a whopping $170 million against prevailing rates. However, current data suggests that this balance has slightly depleted to 4.82 billion XRP.

The market observed this accumulation trend by whales holding 10 million to 100 million XRP from late February to early March. Interestingly, the past accumulation spree also coincided with an XRP price drop. 

These whale addresses held a collective balance of 3.69 billion XRP as of Feb. 21. However, they embarked on a purchase campaign, augmenting their holding to 4.34 billion XRP on Mar. 8. This represented a 650 million purchase spree. The accumulation preceded the XRP rally that began a few weeks later.

Small XRP Addresses Selling Off

Despite this marked uptick in accumulation among whale addresses, smaller XRP addresses have been selling off their bags since mid-June. Addresses holding between 10 and 100 XRP tokens have sold off over 1.7 million XRP since June 14.

The Crypto Basic recently called attention to this distribution pattern, citing Santiment data. Per the report, XRP is witnessing a larger volume of loss-inducing trades, suggesting that most investors are selling off their assets at a loss.

However, Santiment highlighted that this pattern is bullish for XRP, indicating a higher likelihood of a price surge. Notably, this trend typically leads to a purge of speculative holders, allowing more convicted whales to scoop up the tokens and support a price upswing.

XRP is changing hands at $0.4705, down 36% in the last 24 hours. Since plummeting below the $0.50 level on June 23, XRP has failed to reclaim the psychological price level.