Massive 90 Million XRP Move by Ripple Leaves Investors Worried – Is a Crash Coming?

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Alejandro Arrieche

Author

Alejandro Arrieche

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Alejandro is a seasoned financial analyst and adept business expert with over seven years of experience in dissecting complex business topics and vital market trends. His insightful writing, which has…

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A large movement of Ripple (XRP) tokens from the project’s main wallet to an unknown recipient is raising eyebrows within the crypto community as it could result in further weakness in the token’s price down the road.

A total of 90 million XRP tokens were sent to wallets rGBvEZnsKB7EvqA2ZZEXRgdwDMn9G9aBk2 and rDK26ASe17eR4ZJafRzgJxeSJNwAhziAee on December 21.

At the time, these assets were valued at nearly $202 million.

Although this represents just a tiny fraction of the token’s average daily trading volume of $11.4 billion, it is still a cause of concern that the project’s main wallet is sending such a large amount to an unknown recipient.

Typically, this means that the project is taking out XRP tokens from cold storage and moving them to a hot wallet to sell the assets if or as needed.

This move coincides with the launch of Ripple USD (RLUSD), which has led to speculation that the project’s treasury is exchanging XRP for fiat to provide liquid reserves to the stablecoin.

RLUSD is already available on multiple global crypto exchanges and is considered a major milestone for Ripple’s ecosystem now that they have settled their turf with the United States Securities and Exchange (SEC) in court.

The stablecoin is already available on various exchanges including Uphold, MoonPay, CoinMENA, and Bitso and may soon be offered and listed by Bitstamp, and Bullish according to a statement from the project’s CEO, Brad Garlinghouse.

RLUSD offers fully-backed USD reserves audited monthly by third parties, multi-chain support, and cross-border payments via DeFi applications and other similar integrations.

Although the XRP token has been swept into the market’s recent pullback, its performance during the year has been outstanding, delivering gains of 254% to investors since 2024 started, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

This makes XRP the best-performing asset among the top 10 most valuable cryptocurrencies. These gains have been primarily fueled by Donald Trump’s victory in the November presidential election as his pro-crypto views are considered a tailwind to the entire sector and especially to a U.S.-based project like Ripple.

Moreover, the project’s court victory over the SEC, which was finally settled with a $125 million fine, and the resignation of Gary Gensler as the agency’s boss were also interpreted as positive catalysts for XRP.

From a technical standpoint, the outlook for Ripple continues to be positive despite the latest pullback.

The price action has shown that there’s strong support at the $1.95 level and, although it broke its trend line support, this could just be a mere take-profits move from early buyers who benefitted from the post-election rally.

As long as that horizontal support holds, the short-term projection for Ripple is positive. Trading volumes have been subsiding as well, which could mean that sellers are running out of ammo.

Meanwhile, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) shows that Ripple (XRP) has already stepped off oversold territory. This much-needed breather could give late buyers the chance to enter a long position at a more favorable price.

The macro tailwinds that favored the performance of XRP this year continue to be in place while the launch of RLUSD could also increase network activity – which typically leads to a short-term increase in the value of the blockchain’s native token.

Investors have been waiting for the MetaMask airdrop for years but a new wallet has now emerged that could beat it and the best news is that its native token is available in presale at a discounted price.

Best Wallet is an innovative digital asset storage solution that is on track to capture a big chunk of the $11 billion market for non-custodial wallets. It offers high staking rewards, early access to nascent projects via its Upcoming Tokens feature, and community-led governance through the $BEST token.

The presale has been active for just a few days and it has already attracted nearly $5.5 million from investors. This last batch of $BEST is available at $0.023325 per token and the offer expires in less than 48 hours.

You can buy your first $BEST token before the presale ends by visiting the official website of Best Wallet. You can either connect your Coinbase, MetaMask, or Wallet Connect wallet or install the app to set up a new one.

There’s no minimum investment required to buy $BEST. You can either convert USDT or ETH or buy with a bank card if you don’t own any crypto assets at the moment.

What are you waiting for? This limited offer expires soon. Don’t miss the chance to get your hands on one of the most appealing presales of 2024.

Disclaimer: Crypto is a high-risk asset class. This article is provided for informational purposes and does not constitute investment advice. You could lose all of your capital.