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In the last week, the price of XRP increased by 35% as the general crypto market maintains a stellar performance stretching over the last two months. Interestingly, recent developments in the XRP market indicate a sustained bullish outlook for the prominent altcoin. Related Reading: Ripple Labs Future Under Trump: CEO Brad Garlinghouse Outlines Vision For 2025 Whales Accumulate $288 Million XRP As Price Slides To $2.22 In an X post on December 7, renowned crypto expert Ali Martinez shared that XRP whales had embarked on an accumulation spree amidst a recent price dip.  Notably, XRP has been one of the best-performing cryptocurrencies in Q4 2024 rising by over 350% since the US elections. However, the altcoin recorded a significant 23% decline in the past week, falling from $2.90 to $2.22 between December 3-December 6. During this period, Martinez noted that whales i.e. wallets holding between 1 million – 10 million  XRP,  acquired over 120 million XRP, valued at $288 million, as they increased their market holdings to $4.7 billion. Generally, such large purchases by market whales are indicative of confidence in an asset’s long-term profitability and are common bullish signals. Rightly so, XRP has experienced an 18% price gain rising to $2.60 in the 48 hours following this bullish whale activity.  In regards to how high XRP can go, Ali Martinez has set a projected target of $4.34 which may be a good price zone for traders to take profit. However, any unexpected price decline could force the altcoin to return to around $2.23 which Martinez describes as a “key area of support”. Related Reading: XRP Price Steadies Above Support: Preparing for the Next Move? XRPL Active On-Chain Addresses Surpass 100,000 In other news, the number of on-chain active addresses on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) has recently recorded a significant increase.  According to CryptoQuant analyst Wenry, exchange transfers dominated the transaction volume on the XRPL up until Q3 2024.  However, on-chain XRP transactions have now overtaken exchange inflows as the number of active addresses rose rapidly in recent months reaching a yearly high of 100,000 on December 2. This development can be attributed to several factors including improvement on XRPL’s DeFi infrastructure which has created a better working environment that attracts top decentralized protocols similar to Uniswap, Maker, etc.  In addition, there has been significant progress in the development of layer 2 solutions for the XRPL to improve scalability, interoperability, and functionality. Notable projects on this front include The Root Network, XRPL Ethereum Virtual Machin,e and XRPL Hooks. At the time of writing, XRP trades at $2.57 after a 3.94% gain in the past day. Meanwhile, the token’s daily trading volume is down by 13.70% and valued at $12.03 billion.  The altcoin now ranks as the third largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $147.98 billion. Featured image from Bloomberg, chart from Tradingview