Ripple’s $120M Hack: XRP Price Rebounds as Whales Regain Confidence 

Key Insights:

• Ripple (XRP) price rose to a peak of $0.52 within the daily timeframe on Feb 8. 
• On-chain data shows that crypto whales have started buying XRP again activity after an initial negative reaction to the $120 million hack involving Ripple Co-Founder, Chris Larsen.
• It remains to be seen if XRP bulls can stage a breakout above the $0.55 resistance. 

XRP price grazed the $0.52 mark on Feb 8 as investors regained confidence following negative sentiment that heralded the $120 million hack on Ripple Labs co-founder Chris Larsen’s wallet on Jan 31.

On-chain data trends shows that whale investors on the XRP Ledger ecosystem are now regaining confidence following exchanges and law enforcement response to the hack.

As the rebound phase begins, how high can XRP price reach?

XRP Whales Regain Confidence after Initial Negative Reactions

On Jan 30, crypto influencer ZachZBT alerted his 493,000 Twitter (now, X) followers that a hacked gained unauthorized access to a wallet controlled by Ripple Labs’ co-founder Chris Larsen.

Between Jan 30 and Feb 3, XRP price tanked 12%, dropping to a 50-day low of $0.48 as markets reacted negatively to the news.

During that period a significant number of large investors instantly closed or cut down on their XRP positions as the market Fear Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) heightened. However, on-chain data trends show that the whales appear to have regained confidence this week.

The Santiment’s chart below shows that 1,986 wallets held at least 1 million XRP (~$500,000) as of Jan 29. As news of the $120 million hack broke, 29 of them rapidly closed or cut down on their positions, bringing the number of whale wallets to a 30-day low of 1,957 on Feb. 3.

Notably, Binance CEO Richard Teng recently announced that $4.2 million worth of funds linked to the hack had been seized. The Ripple Labs team also further confirmed on-going investigations in collaboration with law enforcement agencies to recover the funds.

These positive developments appear to have calmed frayed nerves. Interestingly, the uptrend in the red trendline above suggests that 17 whales have rejoined the XRP ecosystem between Feb. 3 and Feb. 7, as the large holder wallets increased to 1,974 at the time of writing.

XRP Price Forecast: The $0.55 Resistance Looms Large

Drawing inferences from the on-chain trends analyzed above, the whales buying pressure has put XRP price on an upward trajectory, gaining 2% within the daily timeframe on Feb. 7.

However, the upper Bollinger band technical indicator clearly illustrates that a large sell-wall looms around $0.55.

If the bulls can scale that hurdle, a breakout above $0.60 could be on the cards.

Conversely, the bears could negate this bullish XRP price forecast if the can force a downswing below $0.45. But as observed in the past week, the bulls will likely mount a dominant support buy-wall the $0.49 area as depicted by the lower-Bollinger band line.