Despite its resurgence over the past week, Ripple’s (XRP) price remains in the red on a monthly scale. One factor that may have negatively impacted the valuation during that period is the massive sell-off initiated by large investors, commonly referred to as whales.
Whale Activity and Potential Implications
The exodus began in mid-October, when XRP addresses holding over one billion tokens each offloaded nearly 1.10 billion coins in a single week. This development was revealed by X user STEPH IS CRYPTO, who also disclosed that this investor cohort has reduced its total holdings to approximately 25.1 billion tokens, representing around 40% of the asset’s circulating supply.
The sell-off continued at full speed in the following weeks. Towards the end of October, whales owning between 100,000 and 10,000,000 coins dumped 70 million XRP in the span of just 48 hours. Shortly after, the same group of market participants sold 140 million assets.
November started with a sell-off as well. Those holding between 100 million and 1 billion tokens cashed out 900,000 XRP in the period of five days, while investors possessing between 1 million and 10 million coins flooded the market with an additional 500,000 units. Just several hours ago, X user Ali Martinez announced that whales offloaded another wave of 90 million XRP.
The total amount of coins sold in the past month or so equals almost 1.4 billion, which has a USD equivalent (at current rates) of approximately $3.38 billion.
Such efforts are generally considered bearish since they could negatively impact the performance of XRP. First, a sell-off of that magnitude increases the circulating supply of the asset, which, combined with steady or declining demand, should lead to a price plunge. Second, the whales’ actions may spread panic across the community and cause smaller players to offload their holdings, too, initiating a domino effect.
Some might suggest that these large investors have inside information about an important event that could influence the market, which may explain their bearish tone as of late. Perhaps they are preparing for a potential sell-the-news scenario after the potential approval of the first spot XRP ETF in the United States, expected to go live this week.
Additional Market Signals
Over the past week, the amount of XRP stored on leading crypto exchanges, such as Binance, has increased substantially. This suggests that investors have shifted from self-custody methods to centralized platforms, which is often viewed as a pre-sale step.
However, there are some optimists. Currently, XRP trades at around $2.43 (according to CoinGecko’s data), and X user CharNerd believes that if the price breaks $2.70 and retests it as support, it may surge to $3.20.