On-chain data shows the XRP whales have gone on a large shopping spree recently, a sign that could be bullish for the cryptocurrency’s price.
XRP Whales Have Been Expanding Their Holdings Recently
As pointed out by analyst Ali Martinez in a new post on X, the XRP whales have shown significant net expansion during the past ten days. The indicator of relevance here is the “Supply Distribution” from the on-chain analytics firm Santiment, which tells us about the amount of XRP that a given wallet group is currently holding.
The addresses or investors are placed into these cohorts based on the total number of coins that they are carrying in their balance. The 1 to 10 coins group, for instance, includes all holders who own between 1 and 10 XRP.
The whale cohort is of interest in the context of the current topic. Whales typically refer to entities carrying between 10 million and 100 million XRP. At the current exchange rate, the lower end converts to $5.8 million, while the upper one to $58 million.
Generally, the influence of any entity in the market goes up the more supply that they control, so these investors, who clearly have very large holdings, would be among the most powerful. That said, their individual moves may not still be relevant for the cryptocurrency, but the cohort’s collective behavior certainly can cause ripples in the market. If nothing else, watching the group can at least provide information about what the sentiment among these large hands is.
Below is the chart shared by the analyst, which shows the trend in the XRP Supply Distribution specifically for the whales over the last few months.
The value of the metric appears to have been climbing in recent days | Source: Santiment on X
As the graph shows, the XRP whales have seen their combined holdings shoot up recently. These investors have added a net 380 million XRP (around $223 million) to their wallets over the last ten days.
The most aggressive part of this buying spree had come while the asset had been trading around the $0.53 level, suggesting that the whales thought the asset to be offering a profitable buying opportunity.
And indeed, soon after this accumulation, XRP started on a 10% recovery run. From the chart, it’s apparent that whale buying had similarly fueled the asset’s surge in the first third of August as well.
The whales have continued to pick up more coins over the last few days, so it’s possible that the cryptocurrency could see a continuation of the rally in the near future.
A reversal in the Supply Distribution of the whales, however, can be to keep an eye on, as it may spell a bearish outcome for the token instead, since it would mean that the whales are now selling.
XRP Price
At the time of writing, XRP is trading around $0.587, up almost 4% over the last week.
Looks like the price of the coin has been heading up in the past few days | Source: XRPUSDT on TradingView