Ripple (XRP) price is up by 0.46% today, August 8, to trade at $1.04 at the time of writing. XRP gains come as on-chain data shows that whale activity for XRP remains elevated as XRPL releases a major upgrade seeking to improve privacy and tokenization on the network.
Binance Whale Activity Remains High Despite Price Weakness
Data from CryptoQuant shows that XRP’s Whale-Retail Spread on the Binance exchange has reached 57.7%, suggesting that there are more whales than retail traders who are holding XRP on Binance.
Analyst Amr Taha notes that the whale activity is defying the ongoing price weakness as XRP stays close to the psychological support of $1. Still, he notes that this spread does not mean that whales are accumulating.
“The Whale vs Retail Spread should not by itself be interpreted as direct evidence of whale accumulation… it highlights a growing difference in the relative activity of large and retail participants across trading venues,” the analyst said.
The whale activity comes amid the recent v3.3.0 upgrade on XRP Ledger that seeks to boost privacy and tokenization on the network. As CoinGape reported, the upgrade also drove an increase in XRP’s open interest, suggesting that the tokenization push could be a bullish catalyst for XRP price.
XRP ETFs Record Four Consecutive Weeks of Inflows
The elevated whale activity for XRP on Binance also comes as XRP ETFs record four straight weeks of inflows per data from SoSoValue.
These ETFs recorded $1.01 million in inflows in the week between August 3 and August 7. If the inflows continue for the rest of August, XRP ETFs could also see their fifth straight month of positive inflows.
One of the institutional buyers is IMC-Chicago, an asset manager with $418 billion in assets under management, which purchased 50,975 XRP ETF shares as earlier reported by CoinGape.
SoSoValue also shows that the XRP ETFs have amassed total net assets of $953 million, with this being 1.49% of XRP’s total market cap of $65 billion.
XRP Price Outlook as Bulls Defend Support
XRP’s one-day chart shows that the price is creating a falling wedge pattern that often suggests that the trend is changing from a bearish one to a bullish one.
However, XRP has dropped to test the support at the lower boundary of this channel at $1.01. If it closes below this support, the downtrend could persist.
The RSI reading of 40 suggests that the momentum is favoring bears. The volume histogram bars also show that the selling pressure remains high for five straight days, suggesting that retail traders are not mimicking the accumulation behaviour of whales and institutions.
If these retail buyers come back and XRP price remains above the support of $1.01, it could gain to the upper Bollinger band of $1.14.
