Ripple's XRP continued its rally with a 25% surge on Monday, stretching its monthly gains to over 430%. Following the recent uptrend, the remittance-based token now ranks #3 among top cryptocurrencies despite witnessing a mix of bullish and somewhat bearish investor actions in the past few days.
According to Santiment data, XRP has been seeing heightened buying activity from investors in the past three weeks following its recent surge.
Whales holding between 1M-10M of the remittance-based token bought 679.1 million XRP, now worth ~$1.8 billion. This comes as the non-empty XRP wallets surged above 5.5M for the first time since launch.
XRP investors have also woken up as weekly active addresses on the XRP Ledger increased nearly 200% to 307K in the past month — its highest level since August 2023.
XRP Supply Distribution (1M-10M), Weekly Active Addresses & Holders | Santiment
The bullish view is also evident in XRP Coinbase premium, which showed that US traders have likely been fueling the recent price surge. In November, the exchange's XRP premium ranged from 3% to 13%. However, Upbit, which holds the largest XRP reserve, maintained a moderate premium level.
Meanwhile, asset manager WisdomTree filed an S-1 registration statement with the SEC for an XRP ETF on Monday after an initial registration in the state of Delaware last week. With the latest filings, XRP has joined. Bitwise, 21Shares and Canary Capital.
This follows rumors of the New York government approving Ripple's stablecoin trending across several investment subgroups on social media platform X, with many speculating on how it could fuel the current XRP bull run.
However, market activity hasn’t been all green for XRP. Following the recent price surge over the weekend, XRP investors realized more than $2.7 billion in profits — the highest in the past eight years. This shows despite the recent whale accumulation, investors are increasingly booking profits as they ride the wave.
XRP Network Realized Profit/Loss | Santiment
The Mean Coin Age metric, which measures investors' accumulation/distribution activity, has been trending downwards across all age cohorts. This shows that selling activity has been constant among short-term and long-term investors in the past three weeks.
XRP Mean Coin Ages | Santiment
Additionally, Ripple unlocked 500 million XRP tokens worth over $1.35 billion on Sunday as part of its escrow unlock system. If this supply enters the market immediately, the current bullish momentum will slow down.
Ripple's XRP smashed the $2.58 resistance on Monday, sparking liquidations of more than $91 million in the past 24 hours, per Coinglass data. Liquidated long and short positions accounted for $38.67 million and $52.47 million, respectively.
XRP/USDT weekly chart
If XRP maintains the uptrend above the $2.58 level, it could rally as high as $3.57 to complete the maximum profit target of a rounded bottom pattern. The remittance-based token validated the pattern after rallying above the $1.96 level last week.
The bullish momentum is strengthened by XRP futures open interest (OI) surge to a new all-time high of $4.24 billion on Monday.
Open interest is the total amount of outstanding contracts in a derivatives market. An increase in OI during a price uptrend signifies new money is coming into the market in support of the bullish momentum.
XRP Open Interest | Coinglass
The Relative Strength Index (RSI) has remained at elevated levels in the oversold region in the past week, indicating a correction is imminent due to overheated prices.
A weekly candlestick close below $1.96 will invalidate the bullish thesis.
Ripple is a payments company that specializes in cross-border remittance. The company does this by leveraging blockchain technology. RippleNet is a network used for payments transfer created by Ripple Labs Inc. and is open to financial institutions worldwide. The company also leverages the XRP token.
XRP is the native token of the decentralized blockchain XRPLedger. The token is used by Ripple Labs to facilitate transactions on the XRPLedger, helping financial institutions transfer value in a borderless manner. XRP therefore facilitates trustless and instant payments on the XRPLedger chain, helping financial firms save on the cost of transacting worldwide.
XRPLedger is based on a distributed ledger technology and the blockchain using XRP to power transactions. The ledger is different from other blockchains as it has a built-in inflammatory protocol that helps fight spam and distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks. The XRPL is maintained by a peer-to-peer network known as the global XRP Ledger community.
XRP uses the interledger standard. This is a blockchain protocol that aids payments across different networks. For instance, XRP’s blockchain can connect the ledgers of two or more banks. This effectively removes intermediaries and the need for centralization in the system. XRP acts as the native token of the XRPLedger blockchain engineered by Jed McCaleb, Arthur Britto and David Schwartz.