Ripple’s XRP surges to $0.74 after mysterious $187 million transfer
Ripple’s XRP cryptocurrency jumped more than 20% on Monday, marking its highest price point since a brief spike last November.
This rise positioned XRP as the top performer in the broad-market CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20), which itself was up by 5%. The increase to $0.74 occurred in just over an hour, amid speculations of a potential BlackRock-managed XRP ETF, highlighting a notable rebound against bitcoin (BTC) as the crypto rally widens.
The immediate catalyst for XRP’s price movement remains unclear, though token movements at Binance spurred speculation among the crypto community. Blockchain data tracker Whale Alert reported a transfer of 300 million XRP, worth nearly $187 million at the time, from Binance to an unknown wallet. This was followed by several more transactions moving millions of XRP to different addresses, which could indicate accumulation by large investors or internal wallet maintenance by the exchange.
XRP’s rise also comes at a time when bitcoin has been hitting record highs, and other sectors of the crypto space, like meme coins and AI tokens, have seen strong gains. Prior to this surge, XRP’s performance against bitcoin dipped to a three-year low. Despite today’s gain, XRP’s year-to-date increase stands at 17%, still lagging behind BTC’s 64% rise.
This rally may signal traders’ growing interest in cryptocurrencies that have yet to participate in the broader market’s upturn. Other established cryptocurrencies such as litecoin (LTC) and dash (DASH) have also seen substantial gains in the last 24 hours, with increases of 18% and 9%, respectively. Additionally, Avalanche (AVAX), Polkadot (DOT), and Cardano (ADA) saw their values climb by 8-13% during the same period.
Earlier in January, Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen revealed that there had been “unauthorized access” to some of his personal XRP accounts. The announcement came in response to findings by crypto investigator ZachXBT, who suggested that Ripple might have been hacked, resulting in the potential loss of 213 million XRP, equivalent to $112.5 million.
Larsen clarified that the security breach was confined to his personal XRP accounts and did not affect Ripple itself. Swift action was taken to identify and address the issue promptly. Larsen stated, “We were quickly able to catch the problem and notify exchanges to freeze the affected addresses. Law enforcement is already involved.”
