Are XRP whales dumping their coins?

Santiment analysis found that ever since SEC announced its charges against Ripple, a number of wallets with large amounts of XRP seem to be shrinking. Santiment data indicated that wallets that hold 10 million XRP and more – worth more than $490,000 – have been on the decline. XRP whale addresses have dropped by 18, soon after SEC sued Ripple founders. 

Recently, US Securities and Exchange Commission accused Ripple and two of its executives that they allegedly raised over $1.3 billion through an unregistered, “ongoing” securities offering.

However, analysts at Santiment pointed out that the number of small XRP wallets that hold less than 10,000 XRP, has not reduced. This could indicate that small-scale XRP investors continue to hold the crypto despite recent developments. According to Santiment:

The number of small $XRP addresses being created have not skipped a beat since yesterday’s Ripple lawsuit announcement. 

On 22 December, SEC charged Ripple for allegedly raising funds, through the sale of XRP in an “unregistered securities offering to investors in the US and worldwide.” The federal agency claimed that Ripple allegedly distributed billions of XRP in exchange for “non-cash consideration, such as labor and market-making services.” According to the filing, co-founder Chris Larsen and CEO Brad Garlinghouse also “effected personal unregistered sales of XRP totaling approximately $600 million.”

After Garlinghouse said on Tuesday that Ripple was expecting the lawsuit, XRP prices sank roughly by 17%. By Wednesday morning, the crypto had fallen by almost 25%. At press time, XRP was worth $0.340378 and had a 24-hour trading volume of $14,586,594,974. XRP price has been down by -30.5% in the last 24 hours.

Even before the charges were made official, Garlinghouse denied the allegations and stated that XRP was a currency and should not have to be registered. He recently retweeted XRP supporters who thought the same.