Whales And Sharks Push XRP Price To New 3-Year High, On-Chain Data Shows

The cryptocurrency market has somewhat cooled off over the last few days, but the XRP price seems to have picked up momentum of its own in that period. The usually tame cryptocurrency seems to be decoupling from the market, outperforming the other large-cap assets in the top ten.

According to blockchain analytics firm Santiment, the price of XRP broke its three-year high on Binance, the world’s largest exchange, on Saturday, November 16. This marks the first time the altcoin will be reaching this price level since November 11, 2021. 

Santiment Identifies Catalysts Behind XRP’s Price Surge

In its latest post on the X platform, Santiment revealed that the major token holders in whale and shark cohorts have been responsible for the recent XRP price rally. Specifically, whale and shark addresses holding between 1 million and 100 million tokens have been singled out by the on-chain analytics firm.

For context, a crypto whale (and often a shark) refers to an entity that wields significant influence on the market dynamics due to their substantial holdings. Aside from their direct influence on price dynamics, whales indirectly affect the market as other investors tend to move in the same direction in anticipation of potential shifts.

The latest on-chain data from Santiment shows that the aforementioned cohort of large-scale investors has collectively bought 453.3 million XRP tokens (worth more than $526 million) in the past week. Consequently, the significant buying activity has buoyed the XRP price over the past few days.

The on-chain analytics firm noted that tokens being accumulated by the whales and sharks are primarily emerging from retail traders who are selling their bags for small profits on the recent rally. Sentiment data shows that wallets holding less than 1 million XRP have collectively offloaded 75.7 million tokens (equivalent to $87.9 million) in the past week.

From a historical perspective, that retail investors are offloading their tokens might be good for the XRP price in the long term. 

In this regard, Santiment noted:

Historically, any cryptocurrency tends to see positive market cap growth when its key stakeholders are increasing their holdings and confidence, while simultaneous retail FUD fuels this growth more.

XRP Price At A Glance

As of this writing, the price of XRP is closing in on $1.1, shining in the past 24 hours with a more than 23% rally. The altcoin is one of the best-performing assets on the weekly timeframe, climbing over 116% in the last seven days.