- A whale address was discovered transferring over 52 million XRP to Bitstamp and Bitso exchanges for sale today by Whale Alert, worth a combined $32 million.
- XRPL explorer Bithomp reveals that the wallet is likely owned by Ripple, the company behind XRP, sparking fears that bigger dumps could be on the way and that the price might spiral.
Crypto markets, while open to the general public, are largely determined by the few large holders. So, whenever a whale dumps a significant amount of any crypto, the wider community becomes concerned that it could trigger a price dip. The latest whale to dump is in XRP, and one data portal shows that the address belongs to Ripple, the company supporting the XRP ecosystem’s development.
The first transfer was 25.4 million XRP to a Bitstamp exchange wallet address. This transfer was worth $15.6 million at the time.
🚨 25,400,000 #XRP (15,611,475 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to #Bitstamphttps://t.co/EknzSRCqBD
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) November 16, 2023
Shortly after, the same unknown address transferred 26.2 million XRP to a wallet address held by Bitso, a crypto exchange targeting the Latin American region and headquartered in Mexico City. This transfer was worth $16.1 million.
🚨 26,200,000 #XRP (16,112,008 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to #Bitsohttps://t.co/d2d0HYgVGk
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) November 16, 2023
The XRP community immediately raised concerns over the potential effect that such large transfers could have. Moreover, since they were transferred to centralized exchanges, it indicated that the whale was dumping the tokens for fiat. Traders feared that this could push the XRP price further down amid a 5% dip in the past 24 hours.
However, despite the transfers being among the largest in the past week, they pale in comparison to the overall XRP market value and movements. In the past day, over $1.65 billion worth of XRP changed hands on exchanges, with Binance leading at $262 million. This makes the two transfers almost insignificant in the grand scheme of things. The real challenge would be if these transfers spooked other holders and they started dumping their tokens as well.
Is Ripple the Whale Dumping XRP?
Speculation has been rife over who the whale was as the community strives to make sense of the transfers. According to some, the culprit could be Ripple Labs, the same company whose efforts have fostered a thriving ecosystem for the token.
One report claims that the address has been sending XRP to Bitstamp for weeks now as part of the on-demand liquidity (ODL) arrangement between the two.
As such, the 50 million tokens were not dumped but are being used to facilitate cross-border funds transfers on RippleNet. The network enables users to send money globally without requiring prepaid or nostro/vostro accounts. Not only is this system faster, but it also cuts down the costs drastically.
XRP is trading at $0.608 at press time, but according to one analyst, it’s set to get a big boost on November 19 when SWIFT announces the new ISO 20022 standard for cross-border transfers. This standard expands the messaging that can be included in a transaction and improves efficiency and speed. This analyst believes that XRP could be on its way into this new system.
Conversely, the SWIFT improvement could be a headwind for the token. An efficient and cost-effective SWIFT system could diminish the need for a crypto platform like XRP.
