Whale Activity Weekly Round-Up: XRP Witnesses Significant Dump, ETH, OP Token Incite Interest

Whales are major players in the industry who accumulate or dump tokens of various types of cryptocurrencies. They either take advantage of prices, macroeconomics, accumulate tokens or leverage falling prices to buy the token. Movements in whale activity sometimes impact the price of tokens and sometimes have no impact.

The week saw Polygon MATIC/USD as the winner in token price after a significant whale activity. Also, Wrapped Bitcoin WBTC/USD witnessed a rise in token price after a whale activity was observed.

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Let us look at some of the week’s major whale activities:

• On-chain analytics platform, Lookonchain reported significant Ethereum ETH/USD accumulation by crypto whales. Two significant withdrawals, totaling $7.2 million and $16 million in Ethereum, were executed from Binance, and the entire amount was subsequently transferred to staking accounts.   

Also Read: Bitcoin Whales May Dump Their Holdings, Leading To Price Volatility: Report

• Ripple XRP/USD, already in the news amid its struggle with the U.S. SEC, saw a significant drawdown in holdings wherein whales transferred a significant amount of the XRP crypto to multiple wallets. A whale Alert report indicated a whale moving almost 26.8 million XRP tokens (valued at $14.2 million) from an unknown wallet to the Bitstamp exchange.
• Raising selloff concerns, in a different transaction another whale transferred 20.40 million XRP tokens (worth $10.8 million) from an undisclosed wallet to Bitso exchange.

Ripple has been in the news lately for a few positive reasons, too. The SEC’s request for an interlocutory appeal in XRP was denied reaffirming that retail XRP buyers did not expect profits from Ripple. Also, Ripple’s subsidiary received provisional approval for its major payments institution (MPI) license from the Central Bank of Singapore.

• The week also saw whales accumulating altcoin Optimism OP/USD despite the token’s price seeing a downward trend since early August 2023. The whales took the price fall as a buying opportunity to add on more coins.
• Optimism, an extension to Ethereum, has also done well in different metrics, including improved social engagement, heightened developer activity and amplified transactions.
• Data from Sentiment indicates wallets holding 10,000–10 million OP tokens are repeatedly accumulating. Also, the 100,000–1 million and 1 million–10 million groups have purchased more OP coins in the past few months.
• Mid-week, a whale transferred 300 million Dogecoin DOGE/USD (worth $18.25 million) to the trading app, Robinhood. At a low network fee of just $0.21, the whale transferred Dogecoin leveraging periods of low congestion and fees. Robinhood widened wallet capabilities in August 2023 amid rising user demand for greater coin diversification. Initially, it rolled out Bitcoin and Dogecoin transfers under the wallet upgrades.
• Santiment data revealed Polygon price peaked at its highest since August 2023 after a whale transfer saw 37 million MATIC (worth $20.7 million) from a whale PoS address to a three-year-old wallet. This marked the largest Polygon network transfer since July. The week saw MATIC prices surge 7.7%.
• Crypto whales are leveraging on recent industry swings and positive macro events to accumulate some altcoins for potential gains. Led by expanding whale demand, altcoins Bitcoin Cash BCH/USD, Chainlink LINK/USD and Maker MKR/USD could deliver considerable profits in October 2023.

Also Read: Crypto Millionaire Whales Target These Assets: Are The Coins Ready To Soar?

• Notably, Wrapped Bitcoin WBTC/USD also witnessed a significant increase in big transactions as indicated by Sentiment data. It reflected a rise in WBTC transfers worth more than $1 million, which is the highest level since March 2023. Also, there is an increase in the number of new wallets holding 1 to 1,000 WBTC. The price of WBTC increased 4.1%.

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