Large Transactions Put XRP Price Under Pressure: Are Whales Making An Exit?

XRP has had its ups and downs in the past few months, ranging from a 70% price spike from Ripple’s partial victory in court to whales and retail investors taking profit after the price pump. Now, on-chain data has shown that XRP big money players have made many interesting transactions this month, with whales transferring over 1.7 billion XRP worth $899,530,325. 

According to on-chain data, a total of 1.7 billion XRP, worth over $899 million, were moved by some of the largest XRP holders in August. Whale movements of this nature tend to generate curiosity among investors. Some see it as a bearish signal for the XRP’s price, as these transactions have the potential to put some downward pressure on XRP due to fears of possible large sell-offs. 

Data from Whale_Alerts have shown various whale movements in August. The latest transaction came hours ago, with 424,018,481 XRP worth $225,957,060 transferred between unknown wallets.   

Bitstamp, in particular, received a flurry of XRP from unknown wallets, totaling more than 85,200,000 XRP between August 27 and 29. Bitvavo, another crypto exchange, recorded various XRP whale transactions in the month. In one instance on August 27th, 425,118,503 XRP worth $224,906,760 left the exchange to an unknown wallet. 

However, one XRP investor claims to have tracked out the source of the massive transfers on Bitvavo. The investor explained that the coins have been moved back and forth the exchange many times since 2020 and the latest transfer was to an address controlled by Bitvavo.

A high volume of the XRP whale movement came from Ripple itself. On August 1, the blockchain technology company returned XRP tokens to its escrow wallet just after carrying out its periodical unlock. Ripple periodically unlocks 1 billion XRP tokens to increase the number of tokens in circulation. 

On-chain data from Whale_Alerts also show that 300 million XRP tokens, with a value of $209 million, were locked in Ripple’s Escrow wallet on August 1. Shortly after, the on-chain tracker revealed that a further 500 million XRP tokens worth $349,458,791 were locked back into escrow.

Although XRP is currently up by 2% due to the current buying pressure on Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency is down by 24.61% in the past month. However, XRP trading volume has spiked 115.03% in the past 24 hours.