When XRP rises above $3, how can it achieve "the bear market has been sideways for several years, and the bull market has been rising for half a year"?

Author: flowie, ChainCatcher

Editor: Nian Qing, ChainCatcher

Today, the price of XRP exceeded US$3 for the first time since 2018. As of press time, the price of XRP is now trading at US$3.17, with a 24h increase of 9.2% and an increase of more than 30% in the past week. The overall gains far outpaced the overall crypto market. Additionally, XRP price is already very close to its all-time 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 decided to appeal the Ripple case and asked the Court of Appeal to review the relevant ruling. However, the market generally believes that the SEC is "wasting time" and the new SEC under the Trump administration will adopt a more friendly attitude towards encryption, especially a typical case like Ripple.

Additionally, expectations for the XRP ETF remain strong. Ripple President Monica Long said in a recent interview that XRP is likely to be the next crypto spot ETF after Bitcoin and Ethereum. Approval of these applications will accelerate, especially as governments change.

Coupled with the release of CPI and PPI data last night, core PCE inflation was lower than expected, which boosted the confidence of investors in the crypto market. The crypto market has also experienced general gains.

The price of XRP also took this opportunity to rise again. Just like its usual style.

XRP was issued in March 2013 and began trading in April 2014. The total issuance amount is 100 billion and the issue price is 0.0000007 yuan.

XRP has been unique since its birth. To sum up briefly, the bear market has been sideways for several years, and the bull market has been rising for half a year, and it has become "Optimus Prime" in a short period of time. It can rise more than 3 times or even more than 10 times in more than ten days.

The first burst of XRP can be traced back to the 2017 bull market.

After a short-term decline of about 50%, it went sideways again for about a month. Starting from the end of April 2017, in half a month, it pulled from about $0.37 to $0.4, an increase of 11 times.

Then it fell 60%, and then went sideways for nearly 200 days, until it continued to rise from $0.24 on December 12, 2017, and broke through the all-time high to $3.4 on January 8, 2018. In less than a month, XRP rose again by 14 times.

In other words, from March 2017 to January 2018, XRP experienced three short-term increases of more than 10 times in more than half a year.

However, as the bull market that started in 2017 ended, XRP also fell sharply, first falling 80% from a high of $3.4 to about $0.7, and after several rounds of shocks, it fell to as low as $0.14, and then traded sideways around $0.2. 2 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 the beginning of November 2020, it rose from around US$0.25 to US$0.69 in about 20 days, an increase of nearly three times.

Then it fell again by 60% to around $0.21, and after 2 months of continuous rise, it returned to $0.62 on February 14, 2021, a three-fold increase.

It traded sideways between US$0.4 and US$0.6 for one month. Starting in March 2021, it rose from US$0.41 to US$1.84, rising more than three times again. After rising 3 times, it went through repeated declines and rebounds, and there were many 1-2 times increases, but XRP failed to break through $1.84.

To sum up, in this bull market that started in 2020, XRP increased by 3 times in a short period of time three times, and increased by 1-2 times in a short period of time many times.

As the bull market in 2020 ended, XRP fell to around $0.3 in June 2022, returning to the state where this bull market began. Subsequently, XRP continued to trade sideways at around US$0.4 for more than a year and a half. Until July 12, 2023, XRP rose from US$0.47 to around US$0.81 in two days, nearly doubling, but then fell sharply and stayed sideways for more than a year.

It wasn't until November 2024 that the real explosion began, rising from around US$0.5 to US$3.17, an increase of nearly 6 times in more than 2 months.

Ripple 's tactics ****: attracting institutions to ship

goods**** , and cooperate with them to promote the market.

******** In the bear market, the XRP currency price is stable at 0.2-0.5 US dollars. In each bull market, it has increased several times, and the multiples are also relatively regular. It is difficult to say that it is a normal market phenomenon, and it is almost the result of manipulation by a well-known bookmaker.

In 2020, the SEC's documents suing Ripple revealed Ripple's tactics of wooing institutions to ship goods and cooperate with them to benefit the market.

XRP's chips are very concentrated. Ripple and its team hold most of XRP, so it is very easy to control the market.

The total supply of XRP is 100 billion. Of the initial allocation of tokens, 80% was given to Ripple Labs, and 20% was allocated to the three founders, Jed McCaleb, Chris Larsen: Arthur Britto, who received 9 billion and 7 billion , 4 billion pieces.

Over time, Ripple Labs reduced most of its XRP holdings, selling to institutional investors through over-the-counter transactions, retail investors through cryptocurrency exchanges, and the founders also sold XRP multiple times to cash out.

Currently, 57% of XRP is actually in circulation (the total supply is 100 billion, and the number of XRP circulating in the market is approximately 57 billion). According to the quarterly report released by Ripple, the XRP currently held by Ripple is divided into two parts. One part is held directly through the wallet, and the other part is locked in the ledger custody and released monthly.

According to the top 100 XRP currency holding addresses counted by coincarp .

• The top 10 addresses holding currency account for more than 40% of the currency, and 6 of them are Ripple wallet addresses , with a total currency holding ratio of 30%;
• The top 20 currency holders account for over 50%;
• The top 50 currency holdings account for approximately 63.83%
• The top 100 addresses hold 71.82% of the coins.

Among the top 100 currency-holding addresses, Chris Larsen, executive chairman of the board of directors, has 6 wallets with a total currency holding of more than 2.8 billion, accounting for more than 2.8%. Another co-founder, Arthur Britto, has 7 wallets that hold more than 1.3 billion coins in total, accounting for more than 1.3%.

With the exception of Ripple, most of the wallet addresses among the top 100 currency holding addresses are exchanges. Upbit, Binance, Uphold, and Bithumb are the top crypto exchanges in terms of the number of XRP held by them, with 5.9 billion, 2.05 billion, 2.02 billion, and 1.45 billion respectively, accounting for 5.9%, 2.5%, 2%, and 1.45% respectively.

SBI Holding, a Japanese consortium closely related to Ripple, also owns more than 310 million XRP, accounting for more than 0.31%.

XRP trading on Upbit, the exchange with the largest number of XRP holders, is also an important driving force behind the recent surge in XRP.

In addition, there are two unknown addresses, rDdXiA3M4mYTQ4cFpWkVXfc2UaAXCFWeCK and rKDvgGUsNPZxsgmoemfrgXPS2Not4co2op, both holding more than 3.5 billion XRP, accounting for more than 3.5%.

In addition to Ripple, the crypto exchanges that hold the most XRP are an important force driving the price of XRP.

The SEC lawsuit against Ripple documents shows that in July 2019, a senior vice president of Ripple cooperated with a U.S. cryptocurrency exchange company to allow XRP to be traded on the exchange. In an email sent to the other party, it stated that "the main use case of XRP today is speculation, and exchanges are the main promoters of this use case."

Recommended reading : "SEC Decrypts Ripple's Gambling Techniques: Winning Institutions to Ship and Cooperating to Promote Markets"

Ripple not only pays these exchanges fees in XRP, but also provides rewards for hitting trading volume metrics.

Ripple puts a lot of effort into controlling XRP price and trading volume. For example, algorithms can be used to determine the quantity and price of XRP to be sold to the market; and certain market makers can be paid rewards for meeting trading volume standards.

There is also an "XRP Market Team" within Ripple that is responsible for monitoring the price and trading volume of XRP. They will regularly communicate with Ripple's XRP market maker on XRP sales strategies to ensure that the amount of XRP sold does not exceed a certain proportion of XRP's daily trading volume.

Ripple co-founders Larsen and Garlinghouse are also about to join the "XRP market team" and make various control instructions.

Ripple’s common market-making technique is to pull the market in conjunction with good news. For example, on September 20, 2016, Ripple's vice president of finance sent an email to the market maker, stating that all US$300,000 should be used to purchase XRP within 24 hours of the announcement.

In June 2020, Ripple employees like Garlinghouse and Larsen provided reports that XRP was beginning to underperform Bitcoin due to Ripple selling XRP in the hope that Ripple would buy back XRP.

Garlinghouse subsequently approved the buyback package, and Ripple disclosed in its Q3 2020 market report in November 2024 that Ripple purchased $45 million worth of XRP.

This is also the first time that XRP has surged in the bull market that started in 2020. As mentioned earlier, XRP rose from about US$0.25 to US$0.69 in about 20 days, an increase of nearly three times.

The pace of XRP’s surge in this bull market is also in line with the news. Crypto KOL @sky_gpt once sorted out the entire process in detail.

During the two-week sideways period before November 2024, Ripple output intensively through interviews with CEO Ggarling House, released reports, and released various news related to the XRP business outlook, and the weight of the news seemed to gradually escalate from light to heavy.

During the pull-up period from November 6 to early December, compared to some of the weaker industry outlooks issued during the sideways period, Ripple began to announce confirmed new project implementation plans and closely followed the hot spots. For example, it announced the launch of a tokenized market fund and multiple partners, indicating that XRP supports the Trump administration and has actually donated funds, etc.

The rhythm is also more compact than during the sideways period. Not only were many Ripple executives interviewed, but Ripple steadily output news almost every day or two.

XRP lacks practical uses

Although Ripple has repeatedly emphasized various benefits in payments, stable coins, and tokenized funds, in fact, XRP has no practical use in past business, and XRP's future role in its ecology is still unclear.

Among Ripple's three main products: xCurrent, ODL cross-border payment platform and xVia, the only product that can use XRP is OLD, which was launched in 2018. XRP is equivalent to the fund conversion medium in cross-border payments. The payer converts legal currency into XRP is sent, and the recipient who receives the XRP can then exchange the XRP into the legal currency of the region.

Although Ripple tried to promote the platform and the use of XRP through official subsidies, it did not receive much attention due to the high cost.

Ripple has never disclosed the revenue of cross-border software. Compared with the software business, what really makes Ripple a lot of money is selling coins. In 2019, foreign media website owler analyzed Ripple's total revenue, 80% of which came from selling coins.

Ripple has been selling XRP almost every quarter for the past year. As mentioned earlier, as of September 30, 2024, its total XRP holdings were 4,436,713,796. The number of managed accounts is 38,900,000,005. In the same period last year on September 30, 2023, its total number of XRP was 5,258,162,324, and the number of account custody was 41,300,000,005.

In the past year, XRP has almost reduced its holdings by 3.22 billion coins. Based on the price of approximately US$0.5 per coin during the period, Ripple's income from selling coins in the past year exceeded US$1.6 billion. XRP CEO Garlinghouse and Board Executive Chairman Larsen were also disclosed by the SEC that they made a total profit of approximately US$600 million from selling XRP before 2020.