An XRP whale was caught moving over 220 million tokens, worth over $122 million, after the price of the cryptocurrency nearly doubled over the last 30 days, partly thanks to a wider rise in cryptoasset prices.
According to large cryptocurrency transaction monitor Whale Alert, the transaction was followed by several other large XRP transactions for millions of tokens, and was an outflow from popular cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase.
Such a large transaction coming out of Coinbase could mean large investors have been buying up the token, or that the exchange is reshuffling its funds on cold wallets in a bid to improve security. Some analysts theorize that large Coinbase outflows that aren’t round numbers could be assets moving into custody after being bought in over-the-counter (OTC) deals.
The large transaction comes at a time in which the price of XRP is recovering steadily and has already moved up over 90% in the last 30 days, recovering from a $0.25 low earlier this year to trade at $0.54 at press time.
It’s worth noting XRP hit a $0.75 high thanks to an orchestrated effort from various supporters of the cryptocurrency, who were looking to help its price rise in response to a downward trend that started with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) lawsuit against Ripple.
The SEC’s lawsuit against Ripple alleges the firm and two of its executives “raised over $1.3 billion through an unregistered, ongoing digital asset securities offering.” It saw the price of XRP plunge late last year from a high it had achieved thanks to the FLR token airdrop.
The drop was accelerated by several cryptocurrency exchanges delisting the tokens in reaction to the lawsuit. It’s worth noting some crypto exchanges have sided with Ripple on the lawsuit, arguing that the SEC’s move hurt XRP investors.
Crypto exchange Uphold pointed out that the SEC’s goal is to protect consumers, and believes it’s hard to see “how a judgment rendering XRP essentially worthless and inflicting billions of dollars of losses on retail investors” would square with that goal.
Ripple itself has argued the lawsuit “already affected countless innocent XRP retail holders with no connection to Ripple.” It added it “muddied the waters for exchanges, market makers, and traders.”
Featured image via Pixabay.
