Why the $470 Million XRP Whale Unwind Is Not Cause for Panic: Analyst

XRP whale selling has been picking up, amounting to roughly $470 million in the past 10 days, according to an analyst earlier this week. But there’s no reason to panic because trading volume has been sustained, another analyst noted.

“Historically, such heavy selling can pressure short-term prices, but it’s also worth noting that volumes have not collapsed,” Unity Wallet CEO James Toledo told Decrypt.

“Overall sentiment appears to be very bullish, which is why I am surprised at the large offload,” he added. Toledo said he’s currently seeing neutral funding rates and retail wallets have been stacking XRP, which suggests a redistribution.

At the time of writing, XRP had lost 0.8% over the past 24 hours to change hands at $2.90. XRP is down more than 20% since reaching a record high of $3.65 a month ago. It slid below $3 over the weekend for the first time since early August.

“If XRP can maintain above key support levels despite whale exits, it may reflect underlying resilience rather than outright weakness,” Toledo said.

At the start of the week, digital asset manager CoinShares noted that XRP-based exchange traded products generated $125.9 million in inflows last week, trailing slightly behind the $176 million worth of deposits in Solana-based funds.

The number of XRP ETPs remains limited, but a growing list of U.S.-based ETFs tracking the asset are pending before the Securities and Exchange Commission. In fact, Grayscale and Bitwise received a green light earlier this summer to begin trading,—but the SEC hit pause on their debuts.

XRP whales weren’t the only ones booking profits in recent weeks. The 50-day average of transactions worth $100,000 or more hit a five-month high for XRP and Cardano in August, according to crypto research platform Santiment.

Movement has been even more robust among Bitcoin whales. One whale sitting on $1.67 billion worth of BTC swapped $75 million of it to go long on Ethereum on Thursday. And last month, a Satoshi-era Bitcoin whale moved $8 billion in a single day—the single largest whale movement in BTC history.

Dean Chen, an analyst at crypto exchange Bitunix, said the whale movements signal redistribution more than dumping. Still, for the near term he’s leaning “range-bearish,” meaning that he expects the price to trade sideways or lower.

“If $3.25 or $3.30 cannot be decisively reclaimed, [the] price could revisit $2.78,” he told Decrypt. “A break lower opens a liquidity gap toward $2.72 or even $2.60. Only a high-volume reclaim above 3.30 that flips it into support would set up a resumption of the uptrend.”