After the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Ripple, the number of wallets holding ultra-large XRP positions quickly decreased. Industry data shows that the number of XRP whales is rapidly decreasing.
Leading cryptocurrency and blockchain data provider Coin Metrics estimates that the number of wallet addresses holding at least 1 million XRP has dropped from 1,721 to 1,567 between December 21, 2020 and January 3, 2021. . In other words, surrounding Ripple’s regulatory uncertainty, XRP Whale seems to be liquidating some of its XRP holdings.
As shown in the following chart from Coin Metrics, the number of addresses holding 1 million XRP has continued to increase since the beginning of 2019, until the end of December 2020 has dropped significantly. Addresses holding at least 1 million XRP reached the lowest level since October 2019.
Address with at least 1 million XRP: CoinMetrics
The SEC accused Ripple of violating investor protection laws by selling unregistered securities worth $1.3 billion, and XRP holders were upset about this. The SEC’s lawsuit caused the price of XRP to fall by more than 70% because the exchange and fund managers began to alienate Ripple.
On Tuesday, Grayscale Investment Company announced that its digital large-cap stock funds have all cleared their XRP holdings. Cryptocurrency fund management company Bitwise Asset Management abandoned its investment in XRP before Christmas.
XRP was the only flaw in the weeks when other aspects of the cryptocurrency market were optimistic. Data from CoinMarketCap showed that on Tuesday, among the 15 crypto assets with the highest market value, all except XRP experienced price increases.
More importantly, the market value of XRP is about to be surpassed by LTC. As previously reported by Cointelegraph, LTC briefly replaced XRP as the fourth largest cryptocurrency last weekend. As of press time, the market value of XRP is only $140 million higher than LTC.
