Ripple’s largest investors appear to be backing away from the cryptocurrency, unloading nearly 370 million XRP tokens—worth about $800 million—since the start of April.
The move, first reported by crypto analyst Ali Martinez, comes just weeks after the company’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse announced that the company’s long-standing legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was effectively over.
Whales have sold over 370 million $XRP since the start of the month! pic.twitter.com/KXiCjGHmBM
— Ali (@ali_charts) April 15, 2025
The timing has raised eyebrows. Whale activity, often a bellwether of market sentiment, flipped from accumulation to aggressive selling not long after the lawsuit’s apparent closure and at a time in which Standard Chartered predicted the price of XRP would soar to the $12.5 mark.
Whales Sell XRP Despite ETF Hopes
Previously, XRP had rallied to $3.40 on hopes that a favorable legal outcome would clear regulatory hurdles and attract institutional investors. Instead, the token has dropped to $2.10 at the time of writing, erasing much of its post-lawsuit optimism.
The reversal appears to reflect a classic case of “buy the rumor, sell the news.” In other words, the actual resolution failed to meet the market’s expectations, prompting a pullback from those who had bet early on a bullish outcome.
The sell-off also comes at a time when major asset managers are pushing to launch a set of XRP exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the United States.
As reported, data from crypto betting site Polymarket shows that traders there are pricing in an 86% chance that an XRP ETF will be approved before the end of the year, up from a 60% chance perceived in early January. However, they assign a 42% probability to approval before the end of July.
XRP, despite the enthusiasm surrounding these developments, is down around 10.9% over the last 30 days, likely due to whales selling and as investors “sell the news,” as mentioned above. The cryptocurrency has, nevertheless, been affected by a wider crypto market drawdown over the period.
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