Someone moved 250M tokens amid XRP/USD sell-off

Ripple’s XRP, the third largest digital asset with the current market value of $10.2 billion lost over 12% of its value amid global sell-off on the cryptocurrency market. The coin has broken below several technical levels to trade at $0.2360 at the time of writing.  On the intraday level, XRP/USD gained 1%, having recovered from the recent low registered at $0.2168.

Meanwhile, Twitter-service Whale Alert someone moved 250,000,000 XRP tokens between anonymous wallets. 

While the purpose of the transfer remains unknown, XRP holders are concerned about possible price manipulations. However, it is worth noting, that the wallets did not involve the known OTC distribution wallet of Ripple, that is used by the company to dump the tokens on the market. 

XRP’s technical picture

Looking technically, the psychological $0.2300 now serves as a strong support level for XRP. Once it is out of the way, the sell-off is likely to gain traction with the next focus on $0.2215, created by the lower line of one-hour Bollinger Band. It is followed by the recent low of $0.2168 and $0.2100.

On the upside, we will need to see a sustainable move above $0.2430 (the middle line of one-hour Bollinger Band) to mitigate the initial pressure. Once it is out of the way, the recovery may gain traction towards the next strong resistance of  $0.2600 ( SMA50 (Simple Moving Average) one-hour coupled with the upper line of the previous consolidation channel).

XRP/USD, one-hour chart