In a turbulent week for the cryptocurrency market, XRP (XRP), the popular altcoin, experienced a significant price decline, plummeting to $0.51.
This drop comes as part of the broader crypto market downturn, wiping out much of the gains it had garnered earlier in the year following Ripple’s partial victory in its legal battle against the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Amidst the recent downturn in XRP’s price, crypto whales – individuals or entities that hold significant amounts of financial assets – identified an advantageous moment to increase their holdings of the cryptocurrency.
Notably, there are 221 whale addresses that hold between 10 million and 1 billion XRP tokens, blockchain intelligence platform Santiment revealed on August 20. Cumulatively, these entities now command 16.13 billion tokens, valued at a substantial $8.71 billion.
“There are 221 addresses holding between 10M-1B XRP. They now hold a combined 16.13B tokens worth $8.71B.”
– Santiment wrote.
XRP price analysis
The move by XRP whales accounted for a brief price increase in the token at the start of the week; however, the surge was ephemeral.
At the time of writing on August 22, XRP was trading at $0.52, down 0.16% over the past 24 hours.
On the weekly chart, the crypto token fell more than 17% of its value, losing around $2.7 billion in market cap during this slump.
On a monthly basis, XRP plummeted over 33%, wiping almost all of its gains secured from Ripple’s partial legal triumph against the SEC in June. At the time, US Judge Torres ruled that Ripple did not violate the country’s securities laws by selling XRP on public exchanges.
However, more recently, the SEC voiced its intentions to appeal the ruling. Among other things, this is one of the factors that contributed to XRP’s latest downswing.
Notably, the securities regulator asked for permission to challenge the decision that XRP is not a security.
While it remains unknown what will the final outcome of the Ripple-SEC dispute be, the SEC’s determination to question the June ruling added to regulatory uncertainty surrounding XRP, leading to growing speculations that the value of the cryptocurrency will remain volatile in the near term.
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