XRP (CRYPTO:XRP) climbed to $1.16 this week, its highest level in two weeks, after President Trump agreed to the ethics provision that had been blocking the CLARITY Act in the Senate, but XRP has briefly eased back to around $1.14.
However, what’s interesting is what was happening before that news broke. The biggest XRP wallets have been quietly adding coins for five straight weeks, through a stretch where the price barely moved. So, is the whale buying enough to push the XRP price higher?
How XRP Climbed Back to $1.16
June was XRP’s sixth straight losing month. The XRP price fell from around $1.30 to about $1.04, which is a drop of more than 20%. The coin also closed the month at its weakest RSI momentum reading on record.
July started better, and the XRP price pushed through $1.07, then $1.09, reaching $1.10 by July 3. However, that early move had little to do with XRP itself, as the whole market was bouncing at the time, with Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC) climbing back toward $61,000.
The bigger push came when U.S. inflation data for June showed prices falling 0.4%—the biggest monthly drop since April 2020—and the producer price figures released the next day confirmed the same cooling. When inflation falls that fast, the Federal Reserve becomes more likely to cut interest rates, and lower rates push investors back into riskier assets like crypto. So Bitcoin pushed above $64,500, and the XRP price held the $1.10 level it had just reclaimed.
The strongest push came on Monday, July 20, when reports emerged that President Trump had agreed to the ethics provision blocking the CLARITY Act, settling a dispute that had held the bill up for months. That bill carries more weight for XRP than for most coins, because it would write XRP’s status as a commodity into U.S. law. Bitcoin pushed above $66,000, the XRP price broke through $1.13, and by Tuesday, July 21, it hit $1.16.
XRP has gained about 2.7% over the past week, against 2.1% for Bitcoin and 2.6% for Ethereum. Those are the numbers of a coin moving with the market rather than pulling ahead of it, which is where the whale buying comes in.
XRP Whales Have Been Buying for Five Straight Weeks
Wallets holding between 100,000 and 100 million XRP have added 2.8% more coins over the past five weeks, according to on-chain data firm Santiment. That works out to roughly 600 million XRP, worth about $700 million at current prices, and it brings the group’s total to around 22.35 billion XRP, or more than a third of every coin in circulation.
However, the 2.8% figure is less interesting than the fact it has run for five straight weeks. Large wallets shuffle coins constantly, so a single week of buying means very little on its own. Five weeks of steady adding, through a stretch where the XRP price barely moved, reads as a position being built deliberately.
More so, whale deposits to Binance have dropped to about 947 million XRP over 30 days, signaling a two-month low, and Binance’s XRP reserves have fallen to their lowest level in five months. Big holders move coins onto an exchange when they plan to sell them, so fewer deposits mean less XRP queued up to hit the market.
Overall, XRP now has fewer sellers standing in front of it than at any point in months. However, fewer sellers is not the same as more buyers, and that difference is what decides whether the XRP price can hold above $1.16.
What Would Push the XRP Price Higher
Fpr the XRP price to move higher, it needs to clear the first obstacle at $1.16. Tuesday’s rally stopped there before the XRP slipped back to around $1.14, so a brief spike through the level has already failed once. To go higher, XRP has to close a full day above $1.16 rather than poke through it.
Above that, XRP has to reclaim and hold the $1.18 to $1.20 zone to break the downtrend it has been stuck in all year. Roughly 22.8 million XRP were bought in the $1.18 to $1.19 band, and another 27.4 million between $1.21 and $1.22, so plenty of holders who bought at those prices are waiting to sell as soon as they get back to break-even. Until the XRP price clears that supply, every rally stays inside a falling channel.
Clearing it takes buying that XRP has not seen in months. The spot market, where people buy and hold the coin rather than bet on its direction, has been unusually quiet, and most of this month’s price action has come from futures traders rather than anyone accumulating. Whale buying has cleared the sellers out, but somebody still has to step in and buy for the XRP price to break higher.
That buying would most likely come from the CLARITY Act. Trump’s agreement removed the biggest obstacle, and passage would write XRP’s status as a commodity into U.S. law, giving institutions that have stayed out a reason to move. However, the bill is not through yet, because Democrats have rejected the current proposal to let the Justice Department enforce the ethics rules on its own, and the Senate has until the August 7 recess to settle that and hold a vote. If it misses that window, the midterm calendar takes over and the bill loses its shot for the year.
Bitcoin could also do it, since a decisive move from the largest coin pulls money into everything below it, and XRP has followed Bitcoin all year. Neither has happened yet, and that is why five weeks of whale accumulation has tightened supply without lifting the XRP price much beyond where it started.
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