Ripple News: Whale Activity Spikes Amidst $112M Theft; What Next For XRP Price?
Qadir AK1 Feb 20241 min read
Ripple-backed XRP and its native network, XRPL, were put under a litmus test on Wednesday after an unauthorized takeover of Chris Larsen’s account resulted in huge losses. According to a popular on-chain analyst ZachXBT, approximately 213 million XRP worth about $112 million were siphoned from Larsen’s XRPL account and laundered through different cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance, Kraken, MEXC, OKX, and HTX, among others.
However, Larsen and Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse have confirmed that no Ripple accounts were compromised, and most funds have been frozen.
XRPL Registers Heightened Whale Activity
According to on-chain data analysis provided by market intelligence platform Santiment, the frequency of XRP whale transactions has recently spiked to a multi-month high. Specifically, Santiment noted that about 217 XRP whale transactions exceeded $1 million on Wednesday. Nevertheless, the majority of XRP, amounting to about 67.2 percent, is still held by more than 10 million XRPL wallets, the highest since December 2022.
What Next for XRP Price?
For the first time since July last year, XRP price closed below the 50 monthly Moving Average in January, thus signaling heightened bearish pressure. The XRP price has also invalidated the rising trend characterized by higher highs and higher lows after falling below the crucial support level of around 53 cents in the past few weeks. As a result, XRP price could easily continue on a downward trend in the near term, perhaps until legal clarity is achieved.
