XRP whales have been accumulating a significant amount of XRP tokens in recent weeks, despite the overall bearish sentiment in the market.
This accumulation could be a sign that whales believe the price of Ripple is undervalued and is poised for a rebound.
The price of XRP has been trading in a descending triangle pattern in recent weeks, which could signal a potential breakout in the near future.
XRP's on-chain metrics have been strong, with increasing daily active addresses and network growth.
The SEC v. Ripple lawsuit is nearing a conclusion, and a positive verdict for Ripple could send the price of Ripple soaring.
XRP price dropped by 15% last week, to the dismay of retail and other small-scale investors.
However, the cryptocurrency's decline was a massive opportunity the Ripple whales didn't hesitate to jump at.
According to reports, while shrimp, fish and other small investors took some time to cool off and lick their wounds, the Ripple whales amassed a whopping 170 million dollars worth of Ripple tokens.
This is without mentioning how other metrics like daily active addresses (DAA) and relative network growth also spiked within the same timeframe.
Ripple may not be much in terms of price action, but in terms of network activity, this sub-dollar cryptocurrency appears to be the star cryptocurrency on the market. This leads to the question:
Is the Ripple versus SEC lawsuit's final verdict near?
Let's jump in, shall we?
In all the time between June 22 and June 28 this week, Ripple took a massive 15% hit. And according to a tweet from Ali Charts on Twitter, the whales saw an opportunity in this dip. Right after Ripple went down, they added 360 million Ripple tokens, worth about $170 million to their holdings.
And while whales buying millions or even billions of dollars worth of tokens during dips is not uncommon, they always mean one thing:
The whales believe strongly in the said asset.
Or at least they believe in the ability of its price to go up.
On June 22, the price of Ripple hit a high of $0.52, but it soon reversed direction and started to decline, probably due to profit-taking by investors who believed the asset was overbought.
XRP's price action | Source: TradingView
As a result, Ripple has been trading below $0.5 over the last week, and its market cap has dropped by around 4.3%. However, it is still the sixth-largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization according to CoinMarketCap
Ripple is still bearish to a large extent, over daily and weekly perspectives, despite the news about its whales.
However, there might be a few positive long-term developments on XRP.
Zooming out on the daily chart, we can see that Ripple is in an ascending triangle, as illustrated below.
XRP's decline may have come from a rejection from the top of the ascending triangle.
The existence of the whole ascending triangle shows that the bulls keep buying the dips higher and higher until a breakout (possibly) happens.
Ripple is only heading for a retest of the next support zone, somewhere along the bottom trendline of the formation (around $0.433 and $0.42).
If the bulls take action quickly enough, we can see another bounce and a retest of the $0.56 resistance.
Whales were amassing more tokens, as blockchain network activity grew.
For example, XRP's daily active addresses have also been steady, indicating that the network has more users.
The network expansion of Ripple has also been high, meaning that more new addresses have been created.
However, despite the increased accumulation from the whales, the total number of token holders remained unchanged last week.
The stance of XRP in the futures market appeared to be optimistic as well. According to Coinglass, open interest was reasonably steady, suggesting that the current price trend might continue.
The token was also in strong demand in the futures market since its funding rate remained positive.
Last week, the token's social volume surged significantly. This development indicated the token's growing popularity in the cryptocurrency world.
Furthermore, XRP's weighted sentiment increased last week, indicating that a positive attitude toward XRP was overwhelming in the market.
The long-awaited summary ruling in the SEC v. Ripple case appears to be approaching.
And Ripple and the defendants appear to have had the upper hand in the legal struggle so far, with the court ruling in their favour on multiple occasions.
Can Ripple really win? Maybe.
Ripple's lawyers might be able to pull one last rabbit out of their hats, as they have done in the past. For example, Ripple scored a huge success with the recent release of papers connected to the controversial Hinman Speech, despite XRP failing to react positively to the news.
However, as the lawsuit nears its end, it is possible that whales may be buying this many XRP tokens to capitalize on any possible price explosions in the future.
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