XRP price slumps despite Ripple’s FOMO Pay announcing link between Asia and Africa

Massive XRP whale exodus beats Ripple’s FOMO Pay announcement

Traders associate the drop in XRP price to a massive whale exodus, after 53 million XRP tokens worth $26.7 million were offloaded to Bitstamp and Bitso exchanges on Wednesday.

Specifically, 29.10 million XRP tokens worth $14.72 million went to Bitstamp, while 23.70 million XRP tokens worth $11.98 million went to Bitso. Both transactions came from an undisclosed wallet. These transactions, added to the recent move by Ripple to offload its reserves, contributed to XRP price slipping below a monthly triangle.

Elsewhere, Solana-based decentralized exchange Jupiter (JUP) surpassed XRP in 24-hour trading volume. Ripple recorded a 45% drop to $1.006 billion, while JUP recorded a 175% increase to $1.065 billion, data on CoinMarketCap shows.

It comes after hype around the JUP listing on multiple exchanges, including Binance and Bitfinex, with the “buy the rumor, sell the news” situation playing out. In this trading strategy, traders buy an asset inspired by speculation that there is an upcoming big announcement such as a listing. Afterwards, they sell the asset once the announcement goes public.

In doing so, proactive traders are able to buy the asset before everyone wants to buy it and turn a profit by selling it when the asset’s demand and price metrics increase.

In related news, Ripple co-founder and chair Chris Larsen, together with CEO Brad Garlinghouse, came forward on Wednesday to provide clarity after misinformation that the company’s accounts were compromised. Per their update, it was in fact Larsen’s personal XRP accounts that were compromised, with the bad actor stealing $112.5 million worth of XRP that were then frozen on multiple exchanges.

Ripple price outlook as XRP starts February below a neutral technical structure

Ripple price faced a rejection from the 50-day Simple Moving Average (SMA) at $0.5413, causing XRP to lose the support offered by the lower trendline of a triangle chart pattern. With the Parabolic Stop and Reverse (SAR) trailing XRP price from below at $0.4000, Ripple price could find a turnaround soon.

Meanwhile, the odds still favor the downside as both the Awesome Oscillator (AO) and the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) indicators are in negative territory. The RSI is also below its mean line of 50.

An extended fall could see Ripple price test the $0.3303 support, or in a dire case, extend the fall to the $0.1731 support floor.

XRP/USDT 1-month chart

Conversely, with this bearish outlook, the XRP market could cull out the faint-hearted, akin to what happened in 2018. While other projects were going up, Ripple price remained stale before a bold move north, taking off to record an intra-day high of $0.8000 on September 21.

In the meantime, XRP price still has the opportunity to define its next directional bias on the monthly time frame. A break and close below $0.3303 would solidify the downtrend, while a breach of the $0.9941 barrier would confirm a move north.