XRP Price Sets up for 15% Rally on Ripple Labs’ $285M Share Buy-back Plan

Key Insights:

• Ripple (XRP) price is currently trading around $0.61 as of Thursday, Jan 11, 2024, up 12% within the daily timeframe.
• On Jan 10, Ripple announced plans to buy back shares of the company worth $285 million at an $11 billion valuation. 
• XRP recorded 1,119 unique Whale transactions on Jan 10, signaling that corporate investors have reacted positively to news of Ripple’s buy-back plans. 

XRP price reclaimed the $0.61 territory in the late hours of Wednesday, Jan 10, 2024. Ripple team’s plans to buy back $285 million worth of the XRP parent company’s shares appear to have triggered a positive reaction among the whale investors. 

Is XRP on the verge of a 15% price rally toward the $0.70 mark?

Ripple Labs Announce $285 Million Share Buy-Back Plan

XRP has experienced positive price action this week, delivering a 12% growth performance so  betweeen Jan. 7 and Jan 11. A signficant news event from XRP’s parent company Ripple appears to set the stage for a further price upside. 

On Jan. 10, Ripple Labs, announced plans to buyback $285 million worth of the company shares from early investors and employees. The tender offer allows investors to sell up to 6% of their stake, at a valuation $11.3 billion.

XRP price reacted positively to the news of Ripple’s buy-back plans, reclaiming the $0.61 mark for the first time since market-wide liquidations that rocked the crypto altcoins on Jan 3.

But importantly, looking beyond the price charts, on-chain movements from whale investors in the aftermath of the news signals that more upside could follow. 

XRP Whales Hit Second-highest Transactions for 2024 After Ripple’s Buy-Back News

An in-depth inquest into XRP on-chain data trends reveals whale investors have increased their trading activity substantially in the aftermath of the news event.

Santiment’s Whale transaction count metric tracks whale investors trading activity by aggregating the daily number of confirmed transactions that exceed $100,000 daily. 

The chart below illustrates that XRP ledger network recorded 1,119 Whale transactions on Jan 10. Notably, this is the second highest number of whale activity recorded in 2024, behind the 1,462 whale transactions confirmed on Jan 3. 

By tracking the daily number of transactions exceeding $100,000 the Whale Transaction Count essentially serves as a proxy for measuring the disposition and dominant sentiment among corporate entities and high-net worth investors trading the cryptocurrency. 

A sharp increase in the Whale Transaction count, as observed above, often impacts a cryptocurrency’s price positively. It denotes a growing bullish sentiment and high demand for XRP among large investors in the aftermath of the buy-back news. 

And based on the historical direct correlation to price action, this sharp in whale demand, if sustained, could propel XRP price towards the milestone $0.70 target. 

 XRP Price Forecast: Possible 15% Upswing to $0.70

From an on-chain perspective, the heightened whale demand puts XRP price in prime position for a potential upswing toward $0.70. 

In the daily timeframe, Bollinger Band technical indicators also confirm this bullish stance. It currently shows that with XRP currently trading at $0.61, it has now prodded above the middle-band (SMA). This alignment often indicates a growing bullish momentum.

However, for the bulls to validate the $0.70 XRP price forecast, they must first scale the initial resistance sell-wall around the upper Bolllinger band at $0.66. If the bullish whales keep up the buying momentum, XRP price could smash that resistance and head toward $0.70 as predicted.  

Conversely, to invalidate this positive price outlook, XRP bears will have to force a downswing below $0.50 territory. But in that case, the bulls will likely mount a support buy-wall at the lower Bollinger Band of $0.55 to avert major losses.