XRP whales move several million worth of the token as it struggles near $1

Today, Whale Alert has indicated several large XRP transactions as the crypto token remains under $1. At the time of writing, XRP maintained a 24-hour range of $0.83 and $0.86 on CoinGecko. 

Over 300 million XRP on the move

With that being said, one of the major transfers was 177,149,680 XRP tokens worth around $149,186,279 that was transacted between unknown wallets. Before that, a similar transaction worth around $151,262,681 took place which moved 177,149,701 XRP tokens. 

Also, two major transfers were made to exchanges, namely FTX and Bithumb. Where, crypto exchange Gopax made a 50,083,908 XRP transfer to FTX, and in another transfer, 70,000,000 XRP were transferred internally between Bithumb. 

Meanwhile, all exchange trade volume is estimated to be close to $ 650 million at press time. 

We should also reiterate that XRP has been unable to sustain a bull rally in the last four months to reach a new ATH. As the coin remains under $1, XRP has returned 298.6% in the last year. As its monthly and weekly returns are both unimpressive at over -15% on CoinGecko. 

“Ripple’s strongest year ever”

Despite XRP’s sluggish price action and a lawsuit with the SEC, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse recently called 2021 its strongest year. He noted in a series of tweets that,

“Proud to say it was @Ripple’s strongest year ever (XRP-based On-Demand Liquidity payments account for 25% of $ volume across RippleNet, and ODL txns are up 25x from Q3 2020, and 130% QoQ).”

Apart from that, he also looked back at the year as a time when ‘acceptance and awareness’ around crypto was the clearest in the global financial community. He added, 

“It’s been incredible to see a lot less ‘maximalism’, and many more builders joining the industry.”

However, Arcane’s recent analysis for XRP is not all bright. It noted in its 2022 prediction that XRP will fall out of the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap, along with Cardano. 

With that being said, let’s also look at Ripple’s co-founder and its first CTO, and also the founder of Stellar, Jed McCaleb’s wallet balance. There have been no sales since August and the balance reportedly remains 709,911,634 XRP on the live charts. Meanwhile, his “tacostand” wallet is officially missing in action.