XRP Declines 8%, But Whales Scoop Up 71 Million Tokens

On-chain data shows the XRP whales have gone on a 71 million coin buying spree over the past week even as the asset’s price has dropped.

In a new post on X, analyst Ali Martinez has talked about the latest trend in the supply held by whales on the XRP network. “Whales” refer to the entities holding a considerable amount of the asset in their wallet balance.

These investors can carry some degree of influence in the market thanks to their large holdings, so their behavior can often be worth keeping an eye on. The moves made by the whales may not always directly impact the asset, but they can still be revealing about the sentiment present among them.

There are many ways to track the behavior of the whales, with one such being through their holdings. Below is the chart shared by Martinez that shows the trend in the supply of the large XRP holders.

As is visible in the graph, the XRP whales have expanded their holdings recently. More specifically, these humongous investors have added more than 71 million tokens of the cryptocurrency (worth around $97.8 million right now) to their supply over the past week.

This accumulation spree from the whales has interestingly arrived while the asset’s price has gone down by over 8% within the same window. Considering this timing, it’s possible that the big-money hands are looking at the dip as a lucrative opportunity to buy more of XRP. It only remains to be seen, though, whether this bet from the whales will pay off.

In some other news, XRP may be gearing up for a volatile move, as the analyst has highlighted in another X post. The indicator cited by Martinez is the Bollinger Bands, a tool that’s generally used for measuring the volatility of an asset.

There are three bands in the indicator: a 20-day moving average (MA) central line and two levels on either side of it corresponding to certain standard deviations up and down.

From the chart, it’s visible that the Bollinger Bands have squeezed around the 3-day XRP price recently. This suggests that the cryptocurrency has been experiencing stale price action. According to the analyst, the current squeeze in the metric is the tightest one in over a year. “When volatility compresses this tightly, it’s a signal that a violent price expansion is approaching,” noted Martinez.

XRP briefly breached the $0.54 mark one week ago, but the coin has since seen a notable drawdown as its price has returned to $1.37.