The XRP price has declined by 2% in the past 24 hours, falling to $0.386705 amid a market wide selloff yesterday. Its current level means that it has fallen by 6% in a week but risen by 10% in the last 30 days, with Kraken’s $30 million settlement with the SEC potentially signaling further losses this weekend.
Today’s movements also follow reports of whales and big investors moving XRP to exchanges, possibly in order to sell the altcoin ahead of further falls. However, while the short-term looks unfavorable for XRP, the prospect of a Ripple win against the SEC raises hopes for a big rally later in the year.
XRP’s chart suggests that further losses may come in the next few days before the altcoin’s price settles and begins rising again. In particular, its relative strength index (purple) has shown a consistent decline in the past few days, and may continue dropping towards 30 before climbing upward again, along with XRP’s price.
Something similar applies to XRP’s 30-day moving average (red), which after reaching a peak relative to its 200-day average (blue) looks like it could begin falling down again.
The key support level to watch out for here is $0.38. If XRP falls decisively below this level, further pain could be ahead.
That this is a possibility has been underlined in the past couple of days by reports of whales moving XRP to exchanges. Indeed, one large investor transferred 34 million XRP (worth about $13.5 million) to Bitstamp a couple of days ago, and may have been a big part of the reason why the coin fell in the past day.
Still, it remains important to look at the bigger, longer-term picture here, with Ripple’s case against the SEC still looking good for XRP and the wider cryptocurrency market. According to Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, this case is likely to conclude by the end of the first half of 2023, or by the end of the year at the very latest.
While the SEC has scored victories in similar cases in recent months, it’s certainly not a foregone conclusion that it will win this particular case. To begin with, the end of last month saw Web3 platform LBRY score a big point against the SEC, with its appeal hearing resulting in a declaration from the judge that the third-party sale of LBC tokens does not count as the sale of unregistered securities.
This is highly significant for Ripple, since it suggests that if the court does find that Ripple itself sold unregistered securities, this judgment won’t prevent exchanges from continuing to list XRP. As such, even a loss for Ripple may end up being kind of irrelevant to the future of Ripple and crypto.
Not only that, but the past months have brought a range of small victories for Ripple. This includes the court upholding its right to present a fair notice defense, as well as Judge Torres granting it access to important documents and emails related to a 2018 speech given by then-Chairman William Hinman.
More generally, observers have also claimed that the SECr has been unable to establish how Ripple developed a ‘common enterprise’ — as described in the Howey test — that would boost the value of XRP. If accurate, such an analysis suggests that Ripple may end up securing some kind of positive judgment or settlement.
And what’s promising for Ripple is that it has been able to grow its business even in the context of a long-running legal battle. For instance, its Q4 2022 XRP Markets Report revealed last week that it made $226.31 million in net XRP sales in that quarter alone.
Given the health of Ripple’s business, a win in its case with the SEC could really clear the way for a big expansion in demand for XRP. The altcoin’s price could easily rise to $1 in a matter of days after the arrival of a positive conclusion, while the end of the year could see it
No Comments