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Recent market dynamics have seen the XRP price soars the psychological mark of $1 for the first time since 2021. This marked a major milestone for the price of XRP, which has spent most of the last three years trading below $0.6.
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The rally, driven by key market dynamics and specific holder activity, highlights the role of strategic accumulation by large stakeholders. In particular, the chain data shows a intriguing trend among whalessharks and retail wallets.
XRP Price Breakout to $1.26: Whale and Shark Accumulation Rising
XRP price rose to $1.26 on Binance, reaching a level not seen since November 11, 2021. This three-year high comes during a broader cryptocurrency market rally, but XRP price growth is tied to the strategic moves of its key stakeholders and a Anticipated change in US SEC leadership.
According On-chain analytics platform Santiment, large holders of XRP, specifically wallets with between 1 million and 100 million tokens, have been instrumental in this breakout. In particular, this cohort of headlines is made up of the shark and whale categories. That is, semi-large and large XRP holders.
Whale and shark XRP wallets have collectively accumulated 453.3 million XRP tokens in the last week alone, bringing their total holdings to approximately 18% of the total XRP supply. At the current average price of XRP, this accumulation is worth around $526.3 million. The accumulation of whale and shark portfolios is no coincidence. As Santiment noted, history shows that large-scale acquisitions by market participants tend to signal bullish sentiment and often precede sustained price increases.
Interestingly, while whales and sharks have been accumulating XRP, retail traders have been dumping their holdings. Santiment reported that wallets with less than 1 million XRP collectively sold 75.7 million tokens over the past week, worth approximately $87.9 million. However, the majority of these discharges have been collected by shark and whale purses to essentially counteract any negative effects of the landfills.
Image from X: Santiment
What's next for XRP?
XRP's massive price surge has seen the cryptocurrency overtake Dogecoin in the market capitalization rankings to regain its position as the sixth-largest asset. The price of XRP has increased by approximately 11% in the last 24 hours, while the price of Dogecoin has decreased by approximately 7%.
At the time of writing, XRP has pulled back a bit from this three-year high of $1.26 and is currently trading at $1.06. However, there is still bullish sentiment around XRP, especially if sharks and whales can continue to hold above the $1 mark. This, in turn, will lead to simultaneous retail sales. FUD that will drive further growth.
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According to crypto analyst Egrag Crypto, the next bullish move is for XRP price to close above $1.10 on the current weekly candle.
Featured image of DALL-E, TradingView chart
