Popular blockchain service Whale Alert, which tracks down large cryptocurrency transfers, has detected three transactions that carried a substantial amount of XRP each. All three were made by the San Francisco-based Ripple Labs giant.
In the meantime, XRP, along with Bitcoin and major altcoins, is facing bearish sentiment this week. Still, analysts believe this may be followed by a bullish U-turn.
202 million XRP on move
The aforementioned cryptocurrency lumps carried 120,000,000 XRP; 53,750,023 XRP and 28,850,000 XRP, making it 202,500,000 XRP in total. The fiat equivalents of these transfers are $60,886,309; $53,750,023 and $14,628,631.
The first two transfers were initiated by the official Ripple wallets, and they were tagged by Whale Alert this way. The 173.7 million XRP were transferred to internal wallets belonging to Ripple, according to data provided by the Bithomp explorer.
Both transactions, especially the bigger one, provoked a surprised reaction from the XRP community, with some users also posting bullish comments on their XRP price expectations.
The final transfer, which moved 28,850,000 XRP to major Bitstamp cryptocurrency exchange, was initiated from an anonymous blockchain address. However, the above-mentioned Bithomp data shows that this was also a wallet associated with Ripple Labs.
It is worth noting that Bitstamp is one of Ripple’s partner platforms that power Ripple Payments. This product that runs on RippleNet is leverages XRP for fast and low-cost international payments and transfers. Until the fall of 2023, it was known as On-Demand Liquidity (ODL), but it was rebranded later to make it easier for outsiders to understand.
XRP short traders might be caught off guard
A recent report by Santiment on-chain data aggregator shows that XRP and several other top cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano and Binance Coin, are facing notable bearish sentiment on social media discussions this week. XRP, ADA and SOL are deeper in negative sentiment than their historic average values for the first time over the past half a year.
Still, Santiment analysts pointed out that when a strong FUD begins spreading across cryptocurrencies with large market capitalizations, this may indicate an approaching price bounce. The reason for this is that markets traditionally behave opposite to what traders expect. Thus, XRP may be in for a rise soon.