Whales on the XRP Ledger have been moving a significant amount of tokens in recent days after rapidly amassing a significant portion of the cryptocurrency’s supply over the previous five weeks.
As Daily Hodl reported, whale monitoring service Whale Alert flagged XRP transactions moving more than 70 million tokens to cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp as the year 2022 came to an end, before pointing to another transaction moving nearly 150 million tokens between two unknown wallets.
Both wallets are unidentified on the XRP Ledger explorer Bithomp, and with their addition, $XRP whales have been found to move more than $74 million in cryptocurrency in just a few days, shortly after 500 million tokens were released from escrow.
According to CryptoGlobe, whale addresses on the XRP Ledger holding between 100,000 and 10 million tokens have rapidly increased their holdings over the last five weeks, increasing from 16.7% to 18.3% of the cryptocurrency’s supply.
XRP whales began adding to their holdings at the end of September and early October, when the cryptocurrency’s price began to rise as both the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Ripple Labs sought to settle their legal dispute.
In 2020, the SEC sued Ripple and two of its executives, alleging that they sold unregistered securities when they issued $1.3 billion in XRP tokens. Ripple claims that XRP is not a security.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse stated earlier this year that he believed the company would prevail in its legal battle with the regulator. Several influential cryptocurrency firms, including Coinbase and the Blockchain Association, have filed to support Ripple in recent weeks.
According to CryptoGlobe, cryptocurrency investment products with XRP exposure have seen significant inflows as the SEC’s case against Ripple has become “increasingly fragile” in the eyes of investors.
The settlement of the lawsuit by Ripple could result in an XRP supply shock, which would presumably lead to a price increase as demand remained constant while supply fell. According to Jeremy Hogan, a legal expert and XRP supporter who has been following the case.
Hogan recently commented on a United States District Court ruling in favour of the SEC against the blockchain-based file-sharing network LBRY. The court ruled that LBRY violated securities laws by selling its native LBC tokens without first registering with the Securities and Exchange Commission. According to Hogan, the findings could be included in the SEC’s final brief in the Ripple case.
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