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Whale addresses are on an accumulation spree, having procured 540 million XRP worth over $270 million in the past five weeks.
Market veteran Ali Martinez called the public’s attention to this sustained accumulation pattern in a recent post on X, citing data sourced by on-chain intelligence resource Santiment. The buying spree comes up amid the ongoing market turbulence, which has seen XRP drop 16% since March 11.
XRP Faces Turbulence
For context, XRP capitalized on the market uptrend earlier this year to record an impressive price run. This rally allowed it to surge 53% from the low of $0.4853 on Jan. 31 to a yearly high of $0.7440 on March 11. However, this coincided with a push to a major resistance point, eventually leading to a price crash.
This crash was exacerbated by the market-wide turbulence, as Bitcoin (BTC) and the rest of the market witnessed price declines. However, as XRP saw its price dip to lower levels, market participants took to accumulating more tokens in an apparent buy-the-dip pattern.
Whales Accumulate 540M XRP
As disclosed by Martinez, data from Santiment confirms that whale addresses holding between 1 million and 10 million XRP have been augmenting their balances since last month. Per the data, this cohort of addresses have procured 110 million XRP valued at $55 million over the last two weeks.
#Ripple whales have bought over 110 million $XRP in the past two weeks, totaling around $55 million! pic.twitter.com/yeguiYitcT
— Ali (@ali_charts) May 15, 2024
Due to this purchase spree, the cumulative balance of these whale addresses surged to 3.72 billion XRP, representing 6.7% of XRP’s circulating supply. Although this balance has dropped to 3.69 billion at the reporting time, it still represents an impressive uptick from the 3.61 billion figure recorded on April 29.
Further data confirms that whales holding between 10 million and 100 million XRP have also continued to add to their balances. These addresses held 6.16 billion as of April 5 but have now increased their balance to 6.59 billion XRP, indicating that they have procured 430 million XRP in five weeks. This totals 540 million XRP from both cohorts of addresses in the past five weeks.
Bullish Sentiments Amid Price Struggles
Moreover, wallets holding 10 million to 100 million XRP have continued to increase in number since January. At the end of last year, these wallets amounted to 189. Nonetheless, they have increased to the current figure of 247, suggesting an addition of 58 new addresses this year.
Meanwhile, XRP has underperformed over the past 24 hours despite Bitcoin and the rest of the market recording a resurgence. XRP is trading flat in the last 24 hours, changing hands at $0.5068, with analysts expecting it to reach $0.65 this weekend. Coinglass data shows investors have continued to pull out their tokens from exchanges, reducing selling pressure.