Things seem to be going well for XRP at the moment, and the cryptocurrency appears to be well positioned to make gains in the market. The price of XRP had an incredible rally yesterday as news broke of the US Securities and Exchange Commission withdrawing its case against Ripple Labs’ executives Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen. In addition to this, on-chain data has shown investors accumulating XRP in anticipation of a continued bull run. 

Smart Money Holders Accumulating Rapidly

XRP jumped 10% in 24 hours in response to the SEC lawsuit news to reach $0.53, despite most altcoins seeing little influx and most of the attention going to Bitcoin. According to on-chain analytics platform Santiment, this price jump can be attributed to many medium and large scale investors accumulating XRP tokens. The sharks and whales, also called the ‘smart money’ tier by Santiment, started to accumulate after the news broke out to hold their highest amount since July 27th. 

🐳📈 #XRPLedger enjoyed its first jump above $0.53 in 10 days despite most #altcoins continuing to decline. The rise can largely be attributed to the ‘smart money’ tiers, holding between 10K to 10M $XRP, accumulating rapidly. They hold 29.5% of the supply. https://t.co/KULxMtMGRL pic.twitter.com/LTzFcrwG3f

— Santiment (@santimentfeed) October 20, 2023

These set of traders hold between 10,000 to 10 million XRP tokens in their wallet and own 29.5% of the total XRP supply. These aren’t your typical whales that can increase or reduce buying pressure with just one trade, but mass trading action like this surely shows the general market sentiment. 

On the other hand, on-chain whale tracker Whale_Alerts has shown sporadic whale transfers to crypto exchanges during the week. On Thursday, October 19th, data from the whale tracker showed two XRP whale transfers some hours before the SEC news. The first transfer was of 31,100,000 XRP worth $15,212,146 to crypto exchange Bitstamp. In the second transfer, 32,300,000 XRP tokens worth $15,794,353 made its way to Bitso. Coincidentally, the price of XRP fell from $0.4878 to $0.4788 that same day. 

🚨 31,100,000 #XRP (15,212,146 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to #Bitstamphttps://t.co/p9wr31zwJQ

— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) October 19, 2023

XRP market cap currently at $27.6 billion. Chart: TradingView.com

🚨 32,300,000 #XRP (15,794,353 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to #Bitsohttps://t.co/AGmGVVnJNC

— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) October 19, 2023

What’s Next For XRP – Potential Impact?

XRP has since pulled back some gains from the XRP news and is now trading at $0.517. However, on-chain data points to a more bullish sentiment than bearish as interest in XRP is now at a high level. During this period of accumulation, XRP’s dominance on social media also reached its second highest this month.

We could see XRP reach as high as $1 in the short term if the ‘smart money’ tier traders continue the buying spree, and whales start to join the accumulation. Data from Santiment also shows XRP holders are at a constant rise and this measure is now at 4.81 million wallet addresses.

XRP is currently approaching a critical threshold that has previously caused parabolic price spikes. Larsen, one of the co-founders of Ripple, has criticized the SEC after the agency dropped its lawsuit against the company’s founders.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, has led the crypto market in gains this week. Bitcoin’s price is up by 10.57% as it edges close to $30,000. 

Featured image from The Daily Hodl