Author: flowie, ChainCatcher

Today, the price of XRP exceeded $3 for the first time since 2018, as of press time Previously, the price of XRP was currently trading at $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 reached 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 re-examine the relevant Ruling. However, the market generally believes that the SEC is "wasting time" and that the new SEC under Trump 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. Especially with the change, approval of these applications will be accelerated.

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.

XRP price 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 an "Optimus Prime". It can rise more than 3 times or even more than 10 times in more than ten days.

XRP’s first surge can be traced back to the bull market in 2017, when XRP went sideways More than 700 days from 2017Starting in early March of this year, it rose from around US$0.005 to US$0.054 in one month, an increase of more than 10 times.

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

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

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

However, with the end of the bull market that started in 2017, XRP has also fallen sharply, falling 80% from a high of US$3.4 to around US$0.7. After a round of shocks, it dropped to as low as $0.14 and stayed sideways around $0.2 for 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 in early November 2020, it rose from around $0.25 to $0.69 in about 20 days, a nearly 3x increase.

Then it dropped again by 60% to around US$0.21, and continued to rise after 2 months. It returned to US$0.62 on February 14, 2021, an increase of 3 times. .

And it traded sideways between US$0.4 and US$0.6 for 1 month. Starting in March 2021, it rose from US$0.41 to US$1.84, rising more than 3 times again. . After a 3x increase, it repeatedly fell back and recovered, with multiple 1-2x 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. rising situation.

As the bull market in 2020 ended, XRP fell to around $0.3 in June 2022, returning to the state at the beginning of this bull market. Subsequently, XRP continued to trade sideways around $0.4 for a year and a half Until July 12, 2023, XRP rose from US$0.47 to around US$0.81 in two days, an increase of nearly 1 times, but then fell sharply and stayed sideways for more than a year. It was not until November 2024 that the real explosion began, rising from around $0.5 to $3.17. , up nearly 6 times in more than 2 months

The price of XRP in the bear market is stable. 0.2-0.5 US dollars, each bull market has increased several times, and the multiples are relatively regular. It is difficult to say that it is a normal market phenomenon, and it is almost the result of the manipulation of the banker.

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

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

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

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

57% of the XRP currently in circulation (the total supply is 100 billion, the number of XRP circulating in the market). is approximately 57 billion coins) according to Ripple. The quarterly report released shows that 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%, and 6 of them are Ripple wallet addresses, accounting for a total of 30%;< /p>

The top 20 currency holders account for more than 50%;

The top 50 currency holders account for Bjorn 63.83%

The top 100 addresses hold 71.82% of the currency.

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%.

Except for Ripple, most of the wallet addresses among the top 100 currency holding addresses are exchanges. The crypto exchanges Upbit, Binance, Uphold, and Bithumb hold the largest amount of XRP, 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 that holds the most XRP, is also the recent XRP An important driving force for the surge.

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

Except for Ripple, the crypto exchanges that hold the most XRP are an important force driving the price of XRP.

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

Recommended reading "SEC Decrypts Ripple and Takes Advantage Method: Winning institutions to ship goods, and cooperating with favorable market pulls》

Ripple not only uses XRP to pay fees to these exchanges , and will also provide rewards for reaching transaction volume indicators.

Ripple spends a lot of effort controlling XRP price and trading volume. For example, algorithms can be used to determine when to sell XRP to the market and at what price; trading volume bonuses can be paid to certain market makers.

Ripple also has 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 $300,000 should be used to purchase XRP within 24 hours of the announcement.

In June 2020, Ripple employees like Garlinghouse and Larsen reported that,As Ripple sells XRP causing XRP to start underperforming Bitcoin, expect Ripple to buy back XRP.

Garlinghouse subsequently approved the buyback plan, and Ripple disclosed in its market report for the third quarter of 2020 in November 2024 that Ripple purchased 45 million worth of USD XRP.

This is also the first time 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 3 times.

The rapid rise of XRP in this bull market is also in line with the news. Crypto KOL@sky_gpt once reviewed the entire process in detail.

In the 2-week sideways period before November 2024, Ripple conducted intensive interviews with CEO Ggarling House, released reports, and released various XRP business outlook-related news. Output, and the weight of the message seems to gradually escalate from light to heavy.

The pulling period from November 6th to early December, compared with the sideways trading period In the current period, some companies have issued relatively unrealistic industry outlooks, and Ripple has begun to announce confirmed new project implementation plans and keep up with hot topics. For example, it announced a tokenized market fund and multiple partners, showed that XRP supports Trump and really 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.

Although Ripple has repeatedly emphasized its use in payments, stablecoins, and tokens There are various benefits in the currencyization fund, but in fact XRP has no practical use in past business, and the future role of XRP in its ecology is still unclear.

In Ripple’s three main products: xCurrent, ODL cross-border payment platform and xViaAmong them, 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 the legal currency into The legal currency of the region.

Although Ripple has tried to promote the platform and the use of XRP through official subsidies, it has not received 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 accounts in custody 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 custodians was 41,300,000,005.

XRP has reduced its holdings by almost 3.22 billion coins in the past year. 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 1.6 billion Dollar. XRP CEO Garlinghouse and Board Executive Chairman Larsen have also been disclosed by the SEC that they made a total profit of approximately US$600 million from selling XRP before 2020.