XRP whales add $72M as Bitcoin and Ethereum large holders cut exposure

What happened

Large XRP holders have been increasing their balances while major Bitcoin and Ethereum wallets have been reducing theirs, according to Santiment charts shared by analyst Ali Martinez and reported by CoinGape and Blockonomi. The XRP wallets tracked added about 65.32 million tokens over a four-day period, a stash valued at close to $72 million at the prices used in the analysis.

The movement runs against the direction of the wider large-holder picture. Bitcoin whales lowered their holdings by more than 34,000 BTC, which Martinez valued at roughly $2.6 billion, as the asset's price fell from $79,000 to below $73,000 during the week. Ethereum's biggest wallets were also net sellers, though on a much smaller scale, shedding approximately 17,800 ETH worth about $40 million over seven days.

On the XRP side, the chart cited by Martinez shows tracked whale balances climbing from around 3.90 billion to about 4.00 billion tokens, with a dip in the middle of the sequence followed by a recovery to the highest reading shown. The Bitcoin chart, by contrast, traces a broadly steady decline from near 5.28 million BTC to about 5.24 million BTC, and the Ethereum chart moves from approximately 25.8 million to 25.7 million ETH in a less uniform pattern.

Martinez also pointed to a technical pattern on XRP's four-hour chart, noting the token was trading near the lower boundary of a declining channel at almost $1.16. He wrote that if $1.14 holds as support, XRP could rebound toward the channel's upper boundary at $1.30, a move of about 13% from those levels.