XRP price could be on the cusp of a strong bullish breakout in the coming days after forming a bullish chart pattern and as whales continue accumulating.
Ripple (XRP) continued to consolidate on Friday, trading at $2.216, up by 36% from its lowest level in April. A potential catalyst for XRP price is the continued accumulation by whales over the past few months.
Santiment data shows that wallets holding between 1 million and 10 million coins have increased their holdings from 3.8 billion in November last year to 5.9 billion today, a gain of 2.1 billion.
Similarly, the cohort holding between 10 million and 100 million coins has increased their total from 6.5 billion in February to 7.9 billion. These figures suggest that large-scale investors, often seen as more sophisticated than retail traders, believe XRP has more upside ahead.
XRP whales are accumulating | Source: Santiment
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Ripple price has numerous catalysts
The ongoing XRP buying frenzy is largely driven by investor optimism surrounding several key catalysts.
One major factor is the anticipated approval of an XRP ETF by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which analysts believe could bring in over $8 billion in inflows within the first year. While the official deadline is in October, expectations are that the SEC could approve it as early as June. As a result, investors see buying XRP now as a chance to front-run this development.
Further, analysts are highly bullish on the XRP, with Standard Chartered predicting that it may rise 6x from here. Such a move would push its market cap to over $600 billion, overtaking Ethereum (ETH) if its price continues to underperform.
XRP price may benefit from its growing market share in the stablecoin market. Its Ripple USD (RLUSD) has gained a market cap of over $330 million. Visa expects that the stablecoin market will be worth $1.6 trillion by 2030. If RLUSD gained a 5% market share, its assets would amount to over $80 billion.
Other catalysts are its goals to disrupt the Swift payment system, the recent acquisition of Hidden Road, and the potential Circle buyout.
XRP price technical analysis
XRP price chart | Source: crypto.news
The daily chart shows XRP has held steady in recent sessions. This period of consolidation comes after a breakout above a descending trendline connecting the highest swing points since January.
That trendline marked the upper boundary of a falling wedge pattern, which is often viewed as a bullish reversal signal. The price also remains above both the 50-day and 200-day Exponential Moving Averages and has formed an inverse head and shoulders pattern.
Given these indicators, XRP is likely to continue climbing, with an initial target around $3.40, the year-to-date high, which represents about 53% upside from current levels. However, a drop below the 200-day EMA at $2 would invalidate the bullish outlook.
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