This XRP Veteran Whale Exited With $721 Million In Profit, On-Chain Data Shows

A whale-sized XRP investor holding since more than five years ago finally transferred their coins this month, locking in a huge amount of profit.

XRP Whale Recently Realized Over $721 Million In Profits

In a new post on X, Glassnode senior researcher CryptoVizArt.₿ has talked about a huge profit-taking transaction that recently occurred on the XRP blockchain. The transfer in question involved tokens that were previously dormant since between five and seven years ago.

Tokens that are this old are held by investors popularly called as the long-term holders (LTHs). The cutoff for the cohort is typically put at 155 days and holders falling in it are considered to represent the resolute side of the market.

The coins involved in the recent big XRP profit-taking move were aged years past the LTH cutoff, so the whale who owned them was old even by the standards of the LTHs. Transactions from such investors can often be worth keeping an eye on.

The degree of profit in the latest XRP whale transfer was so significant that it caused a sizeable spike in the Realized Profit indicator.

The Realized Profit measures, as its name suggests, the total amount of profit that XRP holders are harvesting with their transactions. In the chart, the version of the metric shown is specifically that for the 5 to 7-year-old LTHs.

It’s visible in the chart that the indicator witnessed a large spike on December 11th as a dormant whale decided to finally move their tokens. The cryptocurrency was trading around $2.00 back then, which was significantly above the cost basis of the coins at $0.4.

It’s hard to say for certain why the diamond hand decided to part with their coins when they did, but one possible reason can be that they thought the coin would go downhill next, so they decided to take profits while they still could.

The timing wasn’t too bad, either, as since the move has occurred, the coin has shown weakness. According to the Realized Profit, the investor locked in a gain of $721.5 million with the transaction. Wherever the coin heads from here, clearly the HODLer earned their reward for patience.

XRP Price Has Faced A Fresh Retrace

XRP has faced a net drawdown alongside the wider cryptocurrency sector during the past day, with its price setting a low around $1.86 before climbing back to the current $1.94 level.

Interestingly, this drop in XRP has come after social media showed a strong bullish sentiment toward the cryptocurrency last week, according to analytics firm Sanitment. Digital assets often tend to move against the crowd, so the latest decline may be the same pattern playing out once again.