According to a popular cryptocurrency tracking platform, Whale Alert, in the last 24 hours, nearly 50 million XRP have been transacted and deposited on two major exchanges. One of them is the crypto unicorn Bitso, based in Mexico.
According to a popular cryptocurrency tracking platform, Whale Alert, in the last 24 hours, nearly 50 million XRP have been transacted and deposited on two major exchanges. One of them is the crypto unicorn Bitso, based in Mexico.
The transactions likely took place as Ripple-affiliated XRP plummeted 15%, following Bitcoin’s massive drop on Wednesday.
Millions of XRP transferred to exchanges
The data source mentioned above detected two transactions, carrying 26,200,000 XRP and 21,300,000 XRP to the Bitstamp and Bitso cryptocurrency trading platforms. These crypto shards were valued at $15,212,362 and $21,300,000 at the time the transactions were made. Both transfers were initiated by anonymous blockchain wallets, and it appears that the whales were planning to sell all those millions of XRP.
Still, data published by XRP explorer Bithomp shows that they were created by wallets associated with fintech giant Ripple Labs.
Both Bitstamp and Bitso are exchanges that collaborate with Ripple on its payments service powered by RippleNet and that use XRP to make high-speed, low-cost cross-border payments. Therefore, these two exchanges and many others that support “Ripple Payment” need to have large amounts of XRP on hand on a regular basis.
XRP plummets 15% after Bitcoin crash
On December 3, cryptocurrency markets faced a wave of liquidations, first amounting to $150 million and then exceeding $170 million in closed positions. It came after crypto analytics firm Matrixport issued a report suggesting that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is likely to temporarily reject approval of spot Bitcoin ETF filings filed by about a dozen investment funds. Wall Street.
Among those big names are BlackRock, Fidelity and Ark Invest. They have been waiting for the decision since the second quarter of last year. Grayscale is also on that list, winning a case against the SEC, forcing the regulator to revise its filing on converting GBTC into a spot Bitcoin ETF.
Once the report was published, the flagship cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, plunged by approximately 7%, losing $3,000 and bottoming out in the $42,000 zone. Many altcoins followed suit, but XRP’s drop was the biggest of all, dropping 15%.
Solana plummeted 10%. Ethereum plummeted almost 8%. Both Bitcoin and Ethereum have shown a slight recovery so far.