Whales Shift Focus from Ether (ETH) to XRP In Last Week, Here’s Why

Crypto whales have shown a major transition in their behavior over the last week. After backing the world’s second-largest crypto Ethereum (ETH) ahead of the Merge, they are now focusing on Ripple’s XRP.

Post the Merge event last week, The ETH price has come under severe correction losing more than 20% in a week’s time. As of press time, ETH is trading 5.6% down at a price of $1,260 with a market cap of $154 billion. As per on-chain data provider Santiment, Ethereum’s larger addresses have substantially lowered their supply post the Merge upgrade. It adds:

The #Ethereum #merge on 9/15 has brought on a shift in large address behavior. In the past 6 days since the shift to #proofofstake, addresses holding 1k to 10k $ETH have dropped 2.24% of their cumulative holdings. 100 to 1k addresses have dropped 1.41%.

The sell-off in ETH across the broader crypto market remains severe. While other altcoins have registered single percentage digit weekly losses, ETH is down by more than 20%. However, there’s one altcoin that’s trading against the tide, and that is Ripple’s XRP.

Whales Shift Their Attention to Ripple’s XRP

Over the last week, there’s strong buying seen in ripple XRP which has shot up by 20% on the weekly charts. As of press time, XRP is trading at $0.40 with a market cap of $20.2 billion. The recent price surge comes on the reports of XRP soon reaching a settlement with the U.S. SEC. As per on-chain data provider Santiment:

#XRPNetwork is +17%this past week, while #Bitcoin (-5%), #Ethereum (-16%), and most of #crypto has declined. The ongoing battles between #Ripple & the #SEC regarding increased regulation has mainly led to increased trader optimism & high whale movement.

Apart from altcoins, Bitcoin is also facing strong selling pressure dropping 7% over the last week. On Wednesday, the BTC price dropped under $19,000 as the Fed announced a 75 basis points rate hike to combat the soaring inflating.