$500M+ XRP Buy Fails to Move Price: Here’s What Happened

A single XRP transaction worth over half a billion dollars failed to move the market, raising concerns among community pundits.

Notably, these concerns emerged as XRP has failed to mirror the recent market momentum that has pushed Bitcoin (BTC) to a price discovery phase. Specifically, BTC has now changed hands above $111,000 for the first time in history. The asset recently breached its previous all-time high at $109,000. 

Despite Bitcoin’s recent milestone, XRP trades at the lower end of the $2 price region, trading for $2.4 with a meager 0.6% drop this week. Amid this price stagnation, market participants expect intense buying pressure to contribute to an uptick.

Pundits Point to Market Manipulation Following $ 500 M+ XRP Move

However, some pundits believe this has not been the case following a recent whale transaction that they suggest should have at least nudged the price northward. For context, a whale withdrew 236.98 million XRP worth $567 million from Kraken in a single transaction yesterday.

Spotlighting the transaction, “Stellar Expert,” an XRP and XLM community pundit, called attention to the transaction but pointed out that despite the magnitude of the move, XRP’s price did not even bulge.

He noted that while the buying pressure from the transaction ought to at least contribute to a price increase, XRP’s charts saw no pump and wicks, with zero excitement within the market. 

Stellar Expert asked whether this was a market or a simulation, a question he believes even the most loyal XRP proponents would ask at this point. According to him, if a market fails to react positively to the inflow of over half a billion dollars, then something is wrong.

Notably, Digital G, another pseudonymous community pundit and former City of London fund manager, also made similar comments. 

When a whale buys more than a quarter of a billion XRP a couple of hours ago, without so much as a flicker in unit price of XRP, surely even the most trusting will suspect that this whole XRP market has a few fundamental issues. pic.twitter.com/KPm2W9AFgu

— DigitalG (@DigitalG15) May 21, 2025

According to him, when a large transaction like this fails to influence even a slight price push, market participants would suspect the market has some issues. When asked if he believes this could translate to market manipulation, Digital G answered affirmatively.

Here’s What’s Happening

However, a look at the transaction indicates that the pundits might be misinterpreting its nature. Notably, data from the XRP Ledger shows that the transaction is in fact a payment that likely involved a withdrawal from Kraken, and not necessarily a buy. 

Notably, these transactions differ from actual purchases, as they may simply involve the transfer of existing XRP holdings from an exchange to a non-custodial wallet. While such movements are generally bullish, indicating a potential intention to hold the assets long-term, they do not necessarily have any impact on exchange order books.

The only instance where these withdrawals have a direct impact on order books, essentially affecting price, is when the whale recently purchased the XRP tokens before withdrawing them out. Interestingly, Ripple CTO David Schwartz confirmed this in a post, but suggested that it is likely the whale recently bought the tokens. 

It's almost certainly a withdrawal of XRP from an exchange. That doesn't prove it was recently purchased, but that's at least somewhat likely.

— David 'JoelKatz' Schwartz (@JoelKatz) May 21, 2025

Meanwhile, disclosures from order book expert Dom show XRP is indeed facing some troubles on that front. Specifically, Dom confirmed that market participants had sold a net volume of 240 million XRP in the past seven days, with most of the selling pressure coming from Coinbase and Upbit.