![While the Merge Led the Bear Market Rise, Hype Has Been Erased and Ethereum Now Leads the Slide While the Merge Led the Bear Market Rise, Hype Has Been Erased and Ethereum Now Leads the Slide](https://static.news.bitcoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/ethhypers-768x432.jpg)
XRP Scan shows the former Ripple founder’s “Tacostand” wallet has only $16 worth of XRP left at the time of writing.
Former Ripple Labs founder Jed McCaleb has finally ended the eight-year dump of his XRP holdings, leaving only 46.7 XRP left sitting in his famed “~tacostand” wallet.
According to blockchain explorer XRP Scan, the former Ripple founder executed his last outgoing XRP transfer of 1.1 million XRP (worth $394,742.18) at 6:31 am (UTC) on July 17.
Hours later, the account listed an “ACCOUNT DELETE” transaction, meaning the account will no longer exist on XRP’s ledger.
The transaction marks the end of a 9 billion XRP sell-off initiated by McCaleb after leaving Ripple Labs to co-found rival payment protocol Stellar in 2014.
The amount McCaleb has released over the last eight years represents around 18.6% of the total circulating supply of XRP and has been taken as welcome news by the crypto community.
The moment we have all waited for is finally upon us. @JedMcCaleb has finally emptied his taco stand. His dumping of $XRP is now over after many years. Party time!!! https://t.co/lS9kfCf98A
— Rob XRP ☀️ (@robxrp1) July 18, 2022
XRP proponent “XRP whale” proclaimed to his 57,500 followers on Twitter that with the final sell-off, one can finally own more XRP than McCaleb.
BREAKING: Recently Jed McCaleb has sold off his remaining 5M $XRP. You now own more XRP then him#XRP
— XRP whale (57.5k Followers) (@realXRPwhale) July 17, 2022
On Friday, a satirical article from “The Crypto Town Crier” led some to believe that McCaleb decided to hold onto his last five million XRP “just in case it moons.”
“McCaleb, who has sold multiple billions of XRP since leaving Ripple in 2014, said he woke up in a cold sweat Thursday night and realized he just couldn’t let the last of his holdings go,” wrote the authors behind the satire piece.
The Crypto Town Crier is a satirical news site with the tagline “Where truth matters more than accuracy.”
Related: Price analysis 7/15: BTC, ETH, BNB, XRP, ADA, SOL, DOGE, DOT, SHIB, AVAX
The price of XRP is currently sitting at 0.3564, up 0.82% over the last 24 hours. The asset is down almost 90% from its January 2018 all-time high of $3.40.
Ripple Labs has been embroiled in a lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) since late 2020, with the latter alleging Ripple and its executives had offered XRP as unlicensed security to investors.
Last week, the SEC suffered a blow in its case against Ripple after a U.S. judge ruled that the SEC must produce internal documents relating to the “Hinman speech,” which could be a pivotal piece of evidence in support of Ripple’s defense.
Should Ripple be successful in arguing that XRP is not a security, some believe this ruling could set a precedent for other similar crypto token issuers while boosting XRP prices.
The crypto community is concerned that the transfer could lead to the dumping of more than $500 million Bitcoin into the market.
Embattled lending platform Celsius has transferred nearly 25,000 Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC), worth $528.9 million to crypto exchange FTX, prompting concerns from some in the community about whether a dump may soon follow.
The huge transfer to the exchange comes after the lending platform paid off its remaining $41.2 million of debt to Maker (MKR) protocol, freeing up its loan’s entire wBTC collateral.
However, the community is unsure what to make of the transfer, with some fearing that a dump of the wBTC on the exchange could soon follow, pushing Bitcoin prices down.
Others have been more hopeful that the move may be in preparation for Celsius to swap their wrapped Bitcoin for BTC, which may be a good sign for depositors who’ve been hoping for Bitcoin withdrawals to eventually reopen on the Celsius platform. Bitcoin is up 8% in the past 24 hours to trade above $22,100, suggesting market participants are taking the news in their stride.
The 21,962 WBTC unlocked from paying off the remaining DAI loan has already found its way to FTX...
— Airdawg (@Colwellinvestor) July 7, 2022
that didn't take long...
Incoming $BTC dump? https://t.co/A9B9YaLQ1W#CelShortSqueeze = #CelPumpAndDump
Not your keys, not your crypto pic.twitter.com/V2edblhmXZ
The 25,000 wBTC sent to FTX follows the news earlier today that 150,000 BTC may be potentially released into the market as Mt.Gox creditors get their BTC back after an eight-year wait.
So far, both Celsius and CEO Alex Mashinsky have remained radio silent about any movement of funds.
Crypto lawyer Joni Pirovich, Principal of Blockchain & Digital Assets told Cointelegraph on July 7 that Celsius’ repayment of its loan position with Maker will ultimately assist its customers.
Related: Bombshell allegations of fraud as KeyFi takes Celsius to court
“Maker protocol relies on overcollateralized loan positions, so the loan repayment of US$41 million worth of DAI released 21,962 WBTC of capital which is now available to meet customer withdrawal requests.”
Pirovich added that even if Celsius ends up filing for bankruptcy, that repaying the loan position and withdrawing collateral could improve the position of customers.
“The question is what will Celsius do with the withdrawn collateral? Keep it in reserve for customers or risk it to trade and on-lend.”
Although Dogecoin’s futures volume tripled, the recent 42% price dump appears to be entirely retail-driven.
Most recently, DOGE pulled off a 10x gain as it rallied to $0.74 in the past week. The breakout was fueled mainly by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his constant mentions of the token on social networks and interviews. Surprisingly, as Musk debuted on Saturday Night Live on May 8, Dogecoin price corrected by 42% even as Musk, his mother, and SNL actors mentioned DOGE in various skits.
This event led to something rather unusual as DOGE traded over $130 billion over the past week, while its market capitalization stands at $65 billion. This raises the question of whether the largest whales were involved or if futures contracts played an essential role in the crash?
Regardless of the world's second wealthiest person's motivations, Musk's Saturday Night Live appearance appeared to have marked a price peak. Most likely, the event was highly anticipated, therefore causing the typical "buy the rumor, sell the news" price action.
It is not clear why the billionaire has taken such an intense interest in DOGE. Some say this trolling reflects just a personal hobby rather than a core belief that Dogecoin can reform the entire monetary system.
I see Elon Musk removed BTC from his profile. Around the same time, he tweeted about Doge.
— MacroScope (@MacroScope17) February 4, 2021
Not too hard to guess what's going on. Post a funny little joke/distraction after your lawyers ask you to take down the BTC logo while the serious paperwork/filings get done.
We'll see.
Whatever the case is, Dogecoin's rally propelled the meme token to the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, surpassing well-established names such as XRP, Cardano (ADA), and Polkadot (DOT).
Moreover, Google searches for the meme coin managed to surpass the leader Bitcoin (BTC), an absolute victory for its fan base, including Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA team.
Dogecoin is highly concentrated, as the top109 addresses hold 67.4% of the supply. The largest holder is relatively new, created in February 2019. However, tracing previous transactions leads to another address formed in July 2018 and coincides with Robinhood's DOGE trading launch.
As depicted above, the top-14 addresses added a net 4.66 billion DOGE over the past 30 days. In fact, only the ninth-largest addresses sold coins over the past seven days. Even if one extends the analysis to the top-50 addresses, there has been a 4.36 billion DOGE net add.
Currently ranked as number 21, this address reduced its position by 3.43 billion coins. All of the top-20 addresses from three weeks ago now remain as holders in the top-75 ranking.
Therefore, there's absolutely no evidence that whales massively reduced their positions as Dogecoin made a 10x gain.
Data also suggests that futures markets did not play a significant role in the most recent price action. If that had been the case, there would have been considerable volume and liquidations.
From a volume perspective, there has been a 290% increase over the previous week. Although far from a $54 billion peak on April 16, these derivatives markets could have certainly played a part in Dogecoins' incredible rally.
However, large volume does not necessarily cause a price impact, let alone a 100% weekly gain. Therefore, one should also analyze liquidations, the orders forcefully executed by derivatives exchanges to close positions whose margin eroded.
A brutal price oscillation on April 16 caused $726 million of both longs and shorts to be liquidated, as shown above. Over the past week, more longs have been liquidated than shorts, which signals that the upwards move did not catchsellers off-guard.
The $340 million worth of buy orders caused by short sellers' forced liquidations over the past week seems small considering the $28 billion average daily futures volume.
Therefore, this movement seems entirely retail-oriented as there are no signs that the top-50 addresses exhibited unusual activity, nor have there been large liquidation orders in the futures markets.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision.
Since the start of 2021, Dogecoin (DOGE) has sat in the spotlight as its growing community of retail and business-class level supporters have orchestrated a coordinated push to send the popular meme-coin to the $1 level.