XRP Selloff: Whales Shed Coins Worth $1 Billion In A Week

On-chain data shows the XRP whales have distributed a significant amount during the past week, a sign of negative sentiment among large holders.

As announced by analyst Ali Martinez in a new post on X, XRP whales have participated in a notable amount of selling recently. A “whale” is typically defined as an XRP investor holding between 1 million and 10 million tokens. At the current exchange rate of the cryptocurrency, this range converts to $2 million at the lower end and $20 million at the upper one.

Given the size of the range, the only investors who would qualify for the cohort would be the big-money hands. These holders can carry some influence in the market, making the group a key one for the network.

Now, here is the chart from on-chain analytics firm Santiment shared by Martinez that shows how the supply of the XRP whales has changed over the last few months:

As displayed in the above graph, the XRP whale supply has been following a downtrend since mid-November, indicating that the large holders have been distributing. The trend has continued during the past week, with entities belonging to the group collectively selling 510 million coins, worth more than $2 billion at the latest price.

At the same time as the selloff over the last few weeks, XRP has witnessed some net bearish price action, implying that the whales may have had a role to play in it.

Given that these humongous entities haven’t shown any signs of slowing down recently, it’s possible that the coin could see a further drop. It only remains to be seen, however, how whale behavior will develop in the coming days.

In some other news, XRP could be set up for a 16% move according to a technical analysis (TA) pattern, as Martinez has pointed out in another X post.

From the chart, it’s visible that XRP has roughly been traveling inside a Symmetrical Triangle on the 1-hour timeframe since November. A Symmetrical Triangle is a consolidation channel that involves two converging trendlines approaching each other at an equal and opposite slope.

The coin is already more than halfway through the channel, meaning that its range is getting narrow. A narrower range means retests of the support and resistance levels become more frequent, making either more probable.

Based on the height of the channel, the analyst has noted that a breakout could lead to a 16% move for XRP. It now remains to be seen which direction the asset will exit, and whether the pattern will hold.

XRP has again found a rebound since its retest of the $2.00 level, as its price is now back at $2.09.