The XRP price is in the green today, just like the rest of the cryptocurrency market. The reason for this is the news of an important step in the lawsuit between blockchain company Ripple and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
XRP is head and shoulders above the rest, up about 65% in just 24 hours and valuation at $0.78 at the time of writing. Meanwhile, whales have been buying large amounts of XRP in recent months, were they already anticipating Ripple’s possible gains in the long-running lawsuit?
Whales bought million XRP in the run-up to profit
In the month of June we already saw a strong increase in the purchase of XRP by whales. These whales, who own more than 10,000,000 XRP, can exert a lot of influence on the market because they have a lot of wealth. In addition, whales are generally seen as the “smart” money. Historically, these high net worth investors sell their coins during the peak of the market, buying coins close to the bottom price.
What is striking is that these whales bought no less than 360 million XRP tokens between June 22 – 28, which amounts to a current value of $280 million. The significant increase in whale purchases is remarkable, just a few weeks later, Ripple takes an important step in the SEC lawsuit.
While the whale purchase may be a coincidence, it also shows why crypto analysts are closely following whale behavior. These high net worth investors sometimes have more information available than the average investor, which is reflected in their behaviour.
XRP Short sellers are liquidating in large numbers
Another catalyst for the strong price increase today is the liquidation of a large group of XRP short sellers. Short sellers are traders who bet on a further fall in the price of their investment, if the currency does fall, they can make large amounts of money. However, when the price of a currency rises sharply, short sellers tend to move out of their short position. As a result, they have to buy back XRP to exit their position, resulting in a further increase in the price.
What exactly happened? In just 24 hours, over 80,000 traders liquidated their positions with a total value of $285 million. In total, 75% of these positions were short positions. This means that short sellers had to buy over $210 million in XRP to get out of a short position.
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