Whales Fuel XRP Momentum With 110M Token Buy—500% Rally Next?

• In the past five days, large XRP holders holding between 10 million and 100 million tokens have added another 110 million XRP to their stacks.
• While the price dropped by 0.5% in the last 24 hours, this buildup is under the microscope since it replicates the patterns during the rally in 2024.

Ripple’s XRP has taken a hit over the past week, falling by nearly 10% and currently hovering around $2.30. But while the price has slipped, whales aren’t backing down. They’re buying in. According to recent on-chain data, major XRP holders have been quietly accumulating.

In the past five days alone, whales have bought up 110 million XRP tokens. Analysts are taking notice, suggesting this could be the early signs of a trend similar to the one seen in 2024, a trend that preceded a massive 500% price rally.

The accumulation specifically involves addresses holding between 10 million and 100 million XRP tokens. These wallets have increased their collective holdings from 7.56 billion to 7.67 billion XRP. This kind of steady buying during a period of consolidation often hints that a breakout is near, and possibly, a strong rally.

Throughout 2024, XRP delivered a stellar performance. The token surged approximately 238.4%, closing the year at $2.09. That made it XRP’s best-performing year since 2021. In December 2024, XRP broke through key resistance levels, reaching a six-year high of $2.90. This breakout brought a flood of attention from both retail and institutional investors.

In addition, around the same time, Ripple received regulatory approval from the New York State Department of Financial Services to launch RLUSD, a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin. This added more utility to the Ripple ecosystem, and any demand increase or inflow related to this surged towards the end of the year.

Now, predictions about XRP are becoming increasingly bullish. As of now, some of the analysts predict that XRP may touch $3 soon. Others believe it may go as high as $5 to $7 in the year’s first half. According to Crypto News Flash, if XRP breaks the resistance level of $2.60 and maintains it, then it may hit $5.5. Even macro investor Raoul Pal, who doesn’t own XRP, has himself opined that the price could be ready to move even higher.

Mixed Market Signals

Still, not all the indicators are flashing green. XRP’s trading volume has decreased by 11.05% and now sits at $4.30 billion. Open interest, a measure of how much money is tied up in futures contracts, has dropped by 1.16% to $4.62 billion. On the other side, options trading jumped 102.76% to $1.52K, which indicates a growing interest in speculative or hedged bets on what XRP will do next.

The long/short ratio over the past 24 hours stands at 0.9558. This means that for every one long position (betting the price will go up), there are approximately 0.9558 short positions (betting it will go down). So while sentiment is almost evenly split, there’s a slightly more bearish tilt in the short term.

More bullish news about Ripple’s global expansion is that the company has secured a license in Dubai to operate as a digital asset provider in the financial sector. This aligns with Ripple’s vision to enable fast, low-cost international payments, XRP, and now RLUSD can power this.

According to coverage by CNF, Forbes has suggested that there are four key factors that might define the future of XRP, including wins in court with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and easier access for institutions.