Ripple (XRP) price began trading at $0.53 on February 26, down 8% from its monthly high of $0.58 recorded on February 15. Can Whale Investors Trigger a March Rebound?
After a positive performance in the first half of February hitting $0.58, the price of XRP has seen a sharp downward trend over the past week. However, there are early signs of a positive start to March 2024 as whale investors begin to buy the dip.
XRP price underperformed the altcoin market average in February.
XRP price started off positive in February 2024, rising 19% from February 1 to February 16, from $0.49 to $0.58, but has struggled to maintain momentum since then.
In the second half of February, XRP lagged the overall altcoin market average, losing 8% of its gains with the price falling to $0.53 at press time on February 26.
With capital flowing into Ethereum and top performers in the DeFi and Crypto AI sectors led by chart-topping NVIDIA Corp, Ripple-backed tokens have fallen down the pecking order in terms of media attention and market demand.
According to TradingView’s TOTAL2 chart, $194 billion worth of capital is estimated to have flowed into the global altcoin market in February 2024, achieving a whopping 26% growth. In comparison, XRP’s 9% monthly performance was below the market average.
However, the recent trend of on-chain movement observed among whale investors suggests that this trend could reverse XRP’s strength in the coming weeks.
Crypto whale gains 70 million XRP amid falling prices
The price of XRP has fallen 8.3% over the past 10 days, but in unusual circumstances, a strategic group of price-savvy cryptocurrency whales have been seen aggressively buying the dip.
The chart below from Santiment shows real-time changes in balances held by wallets holding between 1 and 10 million XRP coins. When the price fell to a local high of $0.58 on February 16, whales held a total of 3.59 billion XRP in their accumulated balances. As of February 26, it had added 70 million coins, bringing its balance to 3.66 billion XRP.
Valued at XRP’s 10-day simple moving average price of $0.55, this means whales spent approximately $38.5 million buying the dip between February 16 and February 26.
Buying pressure from whales heading into March 2024 could have a positive impact on the price of XRP for a number of reasons. First, the influence of whales can lead individual investors to become more optimistic, which can significantly increase market demand.
More importantly, historically, the purchasing trends of certain groups of whales have often outpaced past XRP price increases. Therefore, a repeat could result in significant price increases.
XRP Price Prediction: $0.57 remains the main resistance level.
Drawing data-driven inferences from recent market trends, the XRP price appears more likely to rise towards $0.60 than to fall below $0.50 in early March 2024.
However, the Parabolic Stop and Reverse (SAR) technical indicator identifies the $0.57 area as the key near-term price resistance for XRP bulls. If the bulls can declare a decisive breakout of that area, a retest of $0.60 could be possible.
The downside is that bears could invalidate these bullish XRP price predictions by pushing psychological support below $0.50. However, with cryptocurrency whales currently on a downward trend, this scenario seems unlikely in the short term.