Bitcoin’s current upward movement feels unusually slow compared to past cycles. Experts attribute the current sluggishness in the market to the OG whales.

Willy Woo, for one, believes this cohort of early investors has slowed BTC’s growth, as the market struggles to absorb their massive profit-taking.

Bitcoin’s Sluggish Uptrend

In his latest post, prominent on-chain analyst Willy Woo explained that a significant portion of BTC supply is concentrated in the hands of early whales who accumulated heavily around 2011, when Bitcoin was trading at $10 or less.

These long-term holders are now sitting on massive unrealized gains, and whenever they sell, the market requires significant new capital inflows – over $110,000 for each BTC – to absorb their sales without driving prices down.

This creates resistance in price appreciation, as the market must constantly counterbalance the selling pressure from these original whales, making Bitcoin’s climb slower and more gradual in this cycle.

“This differential in cost basis, the supply they hold and their rate of selling has profound impacts on how much new capital that needs to come in to lift price. You can look at this as BTC going through growing pains until these 10,000x gain investors are absorbed.”

One major example of this whale activity comes from a Bitcoin OG now moving heavily into Ethereum. Lookonchain’s latest findings revealed a massive move by the whale who originally received 100,784 BTC seven years ago, worth $642 million then and over $11.4 billion on August 25th. In just the past five days, this early holder has been rapidly rotating out of Bitcoin into Ethereum.

They deposited around 22,769 BTC, which is around $2.59 billion, to Hyperliquid for sale, and used the proceeds to buy 472,920 ETH ($2.22 billion) on spot markets while simultaneously opening a 135,265 ETH long position worth $577 million.

The scale and speed of these transactions indicate aggressive profit-taking on BTC and a strong, highly leveraged bet on Ethereum’s upside.

Beyond these structural whale-driven headwinds, short-term volatility also plays a role in Bitcoin’s trajectory, especially during weekends.

Structural Weakness

Bitcoin’s sharp drop this weekend is not random but a result of structural weaknesses in the market. Weekends typically see thinner liquidity, as both spot and derivatives volumes decline, which leaves order books vulnerable to manipulation by large players, according to CryptoQuant.

On-chain data shows that BTC exchange reserves often rise before these weekend dips as sell pressure increases, while excessive long positioning in derivatives creates the conditions for liquidation cascades.

At the same time, metrics like SOPR reveal short-term holders taking profits, which further amplifies volatility. As such, these factors form what CryptoQuant calls a “liquidity trap,” where whales exploit weak market conditions to trigger stop-loss clusters and fuel sharp moves.

XRP’s price posted a +6% green candle for the week on Friday, but other than BNB at +2% and TRX down -1%, it trailed the top 10 crypto assets by market cap. BTC posted +12% gains, ETH +12%, SOL +15%, DOGE +18%, ADA +17%, and SUI an eye-catching +74% candle.

So Ripple’s token may be undervalued at a long-term outlook, and the value buy this weekend for long-term holding crypto investors shopping out of the most favored assets by online and commercial telecom markets.

Here are five recent developments keeping market demand rolling for the massive cross-border payments company’s signature fleet of XRP tokens:

1. XRP Flips Ethereum in Diluted Market Cap

HISTORIC: $XRP FLIPS $ETH

After 6 straight months of outperforming #Ethereum, #XRP has officially become the second-largest asset by fully diluted market cap.

The numbers?

• XRP: $208.4B
• ETH: $192.5B

No hype. No dreams.
Just onchain facts. pic.twitter.com/FcO5p4UCEF

— John Squire (@TheCryptoSquire) April 18, 2025

XRP’s fully diluted market cap is nearly 1/8th of Bitcoin’s in April. That is a remarkable development and a key fundamental metric in the supply/demand economics at play in the daily market price of these currencies.

Bitcoin’s market cap on Friday, Apr. 25, was $1.8 trillion. Ethereum’s was $215 billion, and XRP’s was a distant third at $128 billion.

But, its fully diluted market cap is the market capitalization if all the currency’s tokens were in circulation. By that metric, XRP surpassed ETH for the first time in the final stretch of April.

That’s important over the long term because XRP is supposed to become a scarce digital token with a supply cap of 100 billion coins. Meanwhile, Internet and institutional demand for the asset is high, and its use case is focused yet plentiful with expansion opportunities.

2. Paul Atkins Sworn In As New SEC Chair

Meanwhile, after Ripple’s lengthy and costly lawsuit with the SEC, Paul Atkins assumed office as the new agency Chair on Apr. 21, which is especially important for XRP market prices.

In the private sector, Atkins helped develop best practices for cryptocurrencies for a global strategy, hedge, and regulatory consultancy he founded. This has raised hopes of a final resolution to the lagging Dec. 2020 lawsuit against Ripple Labs.

There are many vast institutional conglomerates that rely on the SEC to do business and won’t invest in something the agency is suing. Only time will tell how many of them are waiting on the government with their eye on Ripple prices.

Patrick Bet-David of the “Valuetainment” YouTube podcast recently said that if the lawsuit is dropped, it will have a big impact on XRP prices going forward.

3. Coinbase Launches CFTC-Regulated XRP Futures

Furthermore, the Nasdaq-listed US crypto exchange Coinbase just launched a CFTC-regulated XRP futures product in April.

This could be a test for demand for XRP from cautious institutional investors and a potential leading indicator for new price support when things with the SEC are finally settled, pat and dry.

But it may be a big hit with leverage traders who find crypto’s volatile markets, with their frequent big double-digit daily swings, not exciting enough without multiplying the risk-reward factor.

Coinbase announced the new feature on X on Apr. 3 and rolled it out on Apr. 21.

Coinbase Derivatives, LLC now offers CFTC-regulated futures for $XRP. https://t.co/omSNu0aEoC

— Coinbase Institutional ️ (@CoinbaseInsto) April 21, 2025

4. Whales Are Buying The XRP Dip in April

“Whales are taking over!” Brett Crypto X tweeted on Apr. 21 to some 90K followers.

Whales are taking over!$XRP trading volume just exceeded 20 million in a single minute.
You see this? This is real utility. pic.twitter.com/YofRSjdRGW

— Brett (@Brett_Crypto_X) April 21, 2025

The last time Brett Crypto X warned about XRP was in the middle of a strong upward trend channel that lasted for months until the financial industry took a haircut, starting in February, over trade jitters.

In one of the threads, a replier begged Crypto X to tell them what blockchain updates software gives them that Star Trek-looking market cap monitor.

Crypto whales have an affinity for trading Ripple and are supporting XRP prices in April. Addresses between 10 million and 100 million XRP moved in April to make up about 1% more of the total share of circulating tokens.

Whale support means greater scarcity and higher exchange prices for a token economy, but add to its risk of future volatility if whales sell.

However, many whales on the blockchain are likely conscious of its economy and other peers and seem to follow Satoshi Nakamoto’s example by waiting months or even years to trade such substantial amounts.

5. Ripple Daily Active Addresses Surge

$XRP network activity jumped 67.50%, with active addresses rising from 27,352 to 40,366! pic.twitter.com/fDiERMIYiz

— Ali (@ali_charts) April 21, 2025

Ripple also saw its daily active addresses surge 67% from 27K to 40K over ten days in mid-April. That’s a more fundamental analysis of the tension against the market valuation of the most recent crypto rally.

Meanwhile, the XRP price chart exhibited an inverse head and shoulders pattern, usually a bullish formation indicating the beginning of a rally in the asset’s price.

The combination of fundamental/market decoupling and bullish technical indicators signals that XRP prices in the last week of April may be hiding bigger green candles.