Many large transactions involving Ripple’s native token XRP have occurred over the past day. The most recent transaction occurred a couple of hours back, affecting 43 million XRP tokens. Per Whale Alert, the tokens were moved from FTX to an unknown wallet, indicating that the same was likely a buy transaction.
Further, around 11 hours back, another similar buy-transaction from Bitstamp involving 64.7 million tokens was made.
In the same timeframe, speculative sells with a slightly higher cumulative value have occurred parallelly. 60 million XRP tokens were dumped to Bitstamp. And a few hours later, another transaction involving the same number of tokens was carried out by the same unknown wallet but on Bitso.
XRP’s price has noted a 6% incline over the past day. The same could mean retail bulls have been riding the hype wave and amassing Ripple’s native token.
Ripple’s escrow unlocks
On the first day of every month, Ripple releases 1 billion XRP tokens from its escrow. Over the past few years, these releases have been made in two transactions, each carrying 500 million tokens. In and around the said period, whale transactions—like the ones outlined above—usually escalate. One possible reason could be whales wanting to make speculative gains.
Dumps usually connote a price dip. In the initial few months of this year, as highlighted in a recent article, XRP has mostly registered gains on 1st day. In June, however, the trend changed, and Ripple’s native asset dipped by 5.6%, while on 1 July, it shed 5.4% of its value.
Almost the entire market was trading in red on 1 June, and 1 July and XRP were just dragged along. The monthly releases single-handedly do not possess the potential to deflate XRP’s price. And the asset’s performance on the first day, from Jan to May this year, justifies the same.
XRP, at this stage, shares a high correlation with Bitcoin [0.83] and Ethereum [0.86]. And with both the coins currently nurturing their respective relief rallies, XRP can be expected to continue to tag along.
On-chain data supported the same. Ripple’s network activity has been improving. For instance, the number of active XRP addresses has sharply risen from 55k to 163.5k over the past day. The by-product of the same was the rise in the number of transactions. Per Messari’s data, this metric has risen from 1.1 million to 1.3 million over the past day.
Thus, considering the broader market sentiment, XRP’s dynamics with Bitcoin and Ethereum, and the improving network activity, XRP can be expected to trade in green over the next couple of trading sessions at least.