Recent market dynamics have seen the XRP price surging past the psychological $1 mark for the first time since 2021. This marked a significant milestone for the XRP price, which has spent the majority of the last three years trading below $0.6. 

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The rally, driven by key market dynamics and specific holder activity, highlights the role of strategic accumulation by large stakeholders. Particularly, on-chain data shows an intriguing trend among whales, sharks, and retail wallets.

XRP Price Breakout To $1.26: Whale And Shark Accumulation Driving Surge

The XRP price climbed to $1.26 on Binance, reaching a level not seen since November 11, 2021. This three-year high comes during a broader cryptocurrency market rally, but the XRP price growth is tied to the strategic moves of its key stakeholders and an anticipated change in leadership of the US SEC. 

According to on-chain analytics platfrom Santiment, large XRP holders, specifically wallets holding between 1 million and 100 million tokens, have been instrumental in this breakout. Notably, this holder cohort consists of the sharks and whales categories. That is, semi-large and large XRP holders. 

XRP whale and shark wallets have collectively accumulated 453.3 million XRP tokens in the past week alone, pushing their total holdings to about 18% of the total supply of XRP. At the current average XRP price, this accumulation is worth around $526.3 million. The accumulation by whale and shark wallets is no coincidence. As Santiment noted, history shows that large-scale acquisitions by market participants tend to signal bullish sentiment and often precede sustained price increases. 

Interestingly, while whales and sharks have been accumulating XRP, retail traders have been offloading their holdings. Santiment reported that wallets with less than 1 million XRP have collectively sold 75.7 million tokens over the past week, worth approximately $87.9 million. However, most of these offloadings have been scooped up by shark and whale wallets to essentially counter any negative effects of the dumps.

Image from X: Santiment

What’s Next For XRP?

The massive XRP price surge has seen the cryptocurrency displacing Dogecoin in market cap rankings to regain its position as the sixth-largest asset. The XRP price is up by about 11% in the past 24 hours, while the Dogecoin price has declined by about 7%.

At the time of writing, XRP has retraced a bit from this three-year high of $1.26 and is currently trading at $1.06. Nevertheless, there is still a bullish sentiment surrounding XRP, especially if the sharks and whales can continue to hold above the $1 mark. This, in turn, is set to lead to a  simultaneous retail FUD that will fuel more growth.

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According to crypto analyst Egrag Crypto, the next bullish step is for the XRP price to close above $1.10 on the current weekly candlestick.

Featured image from DALL-E, chart from TradingView