The price of XRP dropped even lower as market participants spotted a potential move from Ripple to sell millions worth of the crypto asset.
After reaching a new high around $0.74 on March 12, XRP’s price met strong resistance, pushing it lower to the $0.67 level. However, buyers gained the upper hand, helping prices recover as high as $0.7 in the space of a few hours.
Nonetheless, market participants appeared to have been spooked into another sale following a large transaction associated with Ripple.
🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 140,000,000 #XRP (95,001,964 USD) transferred from #Ripple to unknown wallethttps://t.co/FoN72t2vUE
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) March 13, 2024
As spotted by the data tracker Whale Alert, Ripple transferred 140 million XRP ($95 million) to a different address. In turn, the address moved 18.79 million XRP ($12.7 million), still holding a balance of 169 million XRP (approximately $114 million) at the time of writing.
Community Speculates on the Reason Behind the Latest Transfer
The reason behind the latest transfer has remained a subject of much speculation, with some in the XRP community viewing it as a move by Ripple to profit from XRP’s recent climb. As is widely known by the market, the company controls a large portion of the XRP supply and periodically sells XRP for its operational needs.
The transaction history of the receiving address adds to the speculation that the latest transfer is a potential selloff move. The address typically receives a large chunk of the cryptocurrency and moves it out in smaller chunks in a pattern resembling periodic sales.
The latest pattern differs from large on-chain XRP transfers potentially used for Ripple’s on-demand liquidity (ODL) transactions. In the latter case, the address typically receives XRP and moves the tokens within minutes of receiving them.
While nothing is conclusive, the market’s reaction to the large transfer has been noteworthy. XRP dropped as low as $0.67 in the hours following the transfer but has bounced to $0.68 at the time of writing.
Overall, XRP lost 2% on a day when most cryptocurrencies within the top 10 rallied significantly. To its credit, the coin has maintained an impressive 9% gain in the past week, but the market will have to see more buyers for it to remain convinced of a continued uptrend.