Author: flowie, ChainCatcher
Today, the price of XRP broke through $3 for the first time since 2018. As of the time of writing, the price of XRP is currently reported at $3.17, with a 24-hour increase of 9.2%, and a weekly increase of over 30%. The overall increase is far beyond the overall crypto market. In addition, the XRP price is now very close to its historical high of $3.4 set in January 2018.
On January 15, local time in the United States, on the last day of the appeal submission deadline, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) decided to appeal the Ripple case, requesting the appeals court to re-examine the relevant rulings. However, the market generally believes that the SEC is "wasting time", and the new SEC under the leadership of the Trump administration will take a more friendly attitude towards crypto, especially in a typical case like Ripple.
In addition, the expectation for the XRP ETF remains strong. In a recent interview, Ripple's President Monica Long stated that XRP is likely to be the next crypto spot ETF after Bitcoin and Ethereum. Especially with the change of government, the approval of these applications will be accelerated.
In addition, the release of CPI and PPI data last night, with core PCE inflation lower than expected, has boosted the confidence of crypto market investors. The crypto market has also seen a broad-based rally.
The price of XRP has also taken this opportunity to achieve another surge. In its usual style.
XRP was issued in March 2013 and began trading in April 2014. The total issuance is 100 billion, with an initial price of 0.0000007 yuan.
Since its inception, XRP has been unique. In simple terms, it has been range-bound for several years in bear markets, but in bull markets, it surges for half a year, and each time it pulls up, it is like a "pillar of the sky", often tripling or even more than 10 times in just over 10 days.
The first major surge of XRP can be traced back to the 2017 bull market. XRP was range-bound for over 700 days, and starting from early March 2017, it surged from around $0.005 to $0.054 in one month, an increase of over 10 times.
After a short-term decline of around 50%, it range-bound again for about a month, and starting from the end of April 2017, it surged from around $0.37 to $0.4 in half a month, an increase of 11 times.
It then fell by 60% again, and then range-bound for nearly 200 days, until December 12, 2017, when it started a continuous surge from $0.24, breaking the historical high to $3.4 on January 8, 2018, an increase of 14 times in less than a month.
That is to say, from March 2017 to January 2018, XRP experienced three surges of over 10 times in a short period of time, accounting for nearly half a year.
However, with the end of the 2017 bull market, XRP also fell sharply, first dropping 80% from the $3.4 high to around $0.7, and after several rounds of fluctuations, it fell to as low as $0.14, and then range-bound around $0.2 for two and a half years.
Until the start of a new bull market in 2020, XRP began to show signs of recovery from the end of 2020. Starting from early November 2020, it surged from around $0.25 to $0.69 in about 20 days, an increase of nearly 3 times.
It then fell back by 60% to around $0.21, and after experiencing consecutive surges for 2 months, it returned to $0.62 on February 14, 2021, an increase of 3 times.
And after range-bound between $0.4 and $0.6 for a month, it started to surge from $0.41 to $1.84 in March 2021, again surging more than 3 times. After the 3-fold surge, it experienced repeated declines and rebounds, with multiple 1-2 fold short-term surges, but XRP failed to break through $1.84.
In summary, in this bull market starting in 2020, XRP has had 3 short-term surges of 3 times, and multiple 1-2 fold short-term surges.
With the end of the 2020 bull market, in June 2022, XRP fell to around $0.3, returning to the starting state of this bull market. Subsequently, XRP range-bound around $0.4 for more than a year and a half, until July 12, 2023, when XRP rose from $0.47 to around $0.81 in two days, an increase of nearly 1 time, but then fell sharply and range-bound for more than a year.
It was not until November 2024 that it truly began to surge, rising from around $0.5 to $3.17, an increase of nearly 6 times in just over 2 months.
Ripple's Manipulation Tactics: Attracting Institutions to Sell, Coordinating with Positive News to Pump the Market
In the bear market, the XRP price has been stable at $0.2-$0.5, with multiple surges of several times in each bull market, and the multiples are also relatively regular, which is hard to say is a normal market phenomenon, and is almost the result of a manipulated market by the big players.
In 2020, the SEC's complaint against Ripple revealed Ripple's tactics of attracting institutions to sell and coordinating with positive news to pump the market.
The XRP holdings are highly concentrated, with Ripple and its team holding the majority of XRP, making it easy to control the market.
The total supply of XRP is 100 billion, and in the initial distribution of the tokens, 80% went to Ripple Labs, and 20% was distributed to the three founders Jed McCaleb, Chris Larsen, and Arthur Britto, who received 9 billion, 7 billion, and 4 billion respectively.
Over time, Ripple Labs has reduced most of its XRP holdings, selling them to institutional investors through over-the-counter transactions and to retail investors through crypto exchanges, and the founders have also sold XRP multiple times to cash out.
Currently, the actual circulating XRP is 57% (the total supply is 100 billion, and the amount of XRP circulating in the market is about 57 billion). According to Ripple's quarterly reports, Ripple's XRP holdings are divided into two parts, one part is directly held in wallets, and the other part is locked in the ledger and released monthly.
According to the top 100 XRP holder addresses tracked by coincarp:
The top 10 addresses hold over 40% of the XRP, and 6 of them are Ripple wallet addresses, accounting for a total of 30%;
The top 20 addresses hold over 50%;
The top 50 addresses hold about 63.83%;
The top 100 addresses hold as much as 71.82%.
Among the top 100 holder addresses, Executive Chairman Chris Larsen has 6 wallets holding over 280 million XRP, accounting for over 2.8%. Another co-founder Arthur Britto has 7 wallets holding over 130 million XRP, accounting for over 1.3%.
In addition to Ripple, most of the top 100 holder addresses are exchanges. Upbit, Binance, Uphold, and Bithumb, these crypto exchanges hold 590 million, 205 million, 202 million, and 145 million XRP respectively, accounting for 5.9%, 2.5%, 2%, and 1.45% respectively.
SBI Holding, a Japanese conglomerate closely associated with Ripple, also owns over 31 million XRP, accounting for over 0.31%.
The XRP trading on the largest XRP holder exchange Upbit has also been an important driver of the recent XRP surge.
In addition, there are two unknown addresses, rDdXiA3M4mYTQ4cFpWkVXfc2UaAXCFWeCK and rKDvgGUsNPZxsgmoemfrgXPS2Not4co2op, each holding over 350 million XRP, accounting for over 3.5%.
In addition to Ripple, the crypto exchanges holding the most XRP are an important force driving the XRP price.
The SEC's lawsuit against Ripple shows that in July 2019, a senior Ripple executive collaborated with a U.S. crypto exchange company to list XRP for trading, stating in an email to the counterparty that "the main use case for XRP now is speculation, and exchanges are the main drivers of this use case".
Recommended reading: 'SEC Decrypts Ripple's Manipulation Tactics: Rallying Institutions to Dump, Coordinating with Positive News to Pump the Market'
Ripple not only pays fees to these crypto exchanges using XRP, but also provides rewards to meet trading volume targets.
Ripple has spent a lot of effort controlling the price and trading volume of XRP. For example, using algorithms to determine the timing and amount of XRP sold to the market; paying trading volume incentives to certain market makers.
Ripple also has an 'XRP Markets Team' internally to monitor the price and trading volume of XRP. They regularly communicate with Ripple's XRP market makers on the XRP sales strategy, ensuring the amount of XRP sold does not exceed a certain percentage of the daily XRP trading volume.
Ripple co-founders Larsen and Garlinghouse will also soon be involved in the 'XRP Markets Team', issuing various price manipulation orders.
Ripple's common market-making tactic is to coordinate with positive news to pump the market. For example, on September 20, 2016, Ripple's VP of Finance emailed market makers, saying they should use the entire $300,000 to buy XRP within 24 hours of the announcement.
In June 2020, Ripple employees like Garlinghouse and Larsen provided a report stating that due to Ripple's XRP sales, XRP began to underperform Bitcoin, and hoped Ripple would buy back XRP.
Subsequently, Garlinghouse approved the buyback plan, and Ripple disclosed in its Q3 2020 market report in November 2024 that Ripple had purchased $45 million worth of XRP.
This was also the first time XRP surged in this current bull market, as mentioned earlier, XRP rose from around $0.25 to $0.69, an increase of nearly 3 times, in about 20 days.
The rapid rise of XRP in this bull market is also in line with the pattern of pumping the market with news. Crypto KOL @sky_gpt has detailed the entire process.
In the 2 weeks of sideways trading before November 2024, Ripple densely released news through CEO Garlinghouse interviews, reports, and various XRP business outlook updates, with the news intensity seemingly increasing from light to heavy.
From November 6th to early December, the pumping period, compared to the somewhat vague industry outlook released during the sideways trading period, Ripple began to announce definite new project implementation plans, closely following the hot spots. For example, announcing tokenized market funds and multiple partners, stating that XRP supports the Trump administration and actually donating funds.
The rhythm was also more compact than the sideways trading period, with not only multiple Ripple executives giving interviews, but Ripple almost steadily releasing news every one or two days.
XRP Lacks Actual Utility
Although Ripple has repeatedly emphasized the various positive news in payments, stablecoins, and tokenized funds, in reality XRP has no actual use in Ripple's past business, and the future role of XRP in its ecosystem remains unclear.
Among Ripple's three main products, xCurrent, ODL cross-border payment platform, and xVia, the only one that can use XRP is ODL, which was launched in 2018. XRP essentially serves as a currency conversion medium in cross-border payments, with the payer converting fiat to XRP for transmission, and the recipient then converting XRP back to the local fiat currency.
Although Ripple has tried to promote this platform and the use of XRP through official subsidies, due to the high cost, it has not gained much attention.
Ripple has never disclosed the revenue situation of its cross-border software. Compared to the software business, what really makes Ripple a huge profit is selling coins. In 2019, the website Owler analyzed Ripple's total revenue, of which 80% came from coin sales.
And in the past year, Ripple has been selling XRP almost every quarter. As mentioned earlier, as of September 30, 2024, its total XRP holdings were 4,436,713,796. The custodial account balance was 38,900,000,005. While in the same period last year, on September 30, 2023, its total XRP was 5,258,162,324, and the custodial account balance was 41,300,000,005.
In the past year, XRP has been reduced by nearly 3.22 billion, and based on an average price of about $0.5 during the period, Ripple has made over $1.6 billion from selling coins in the past year. SEC has also disclosed that XRP CEO Garlinghouse and Executive Chairman Larsen made about $600 million in profits from selling XRP before 2020.
