Bitcoin has been on an upward trajectory this week, with its price pushing toward the crucial $110,000 mark.
However, sustaining this momentum could prove challenging, as it has been for the last two months. Whales appear to be taking profits, which may impact Bitcoin’s ability to maintain these gains.
Bitcoin Whales Sell Heavily
Whale activity has been notable in recent days, with addresses holding between 1,000 BTC and 10,000 BTC, selling off significant portions of their holdings.
In the past week alone, these whales have sold over 40,000 BTC, valued at more than $4.3 billion. This selling pressure is likely a response to Bitcoin’s recent price rise, as these large holders may be uncertain about the sustainability of the rally.
This type of selling by whales can be detrimental to Bitcoin’s price, as it creates bearish pressure when such large volumes are sold at once. The impact of whale selling could prevent Bitcoin from maintaining its upward momentum.
In addition to whale selling, the Liveliness metric, which tracks the frequency of Bitcoin transactions, has seen a sharp uptick this week.
A rising Liveliness typically signals that long-term holders (LTHs) are moving their assets instead of holding them. This shift suggests that LTHs are opting to sell their holdings rather than accumulate, which mirrors the actions of the whales.
LTHs, with their significant influence over Bitcoin’s market, are likely to have a pronounced effect on price movements. If they continue to sell, it could lead to further volatility and potentially limit Bitcoin’s price recovery.
Bitcoin’s price has risen by 7% in the last 24 hours, reaching $108,145 at the time of writing. The cryptocurrency is currently attempting to establish $108,000 as a solid support level.
However, the ongoing selling by whales and the shift in LTH behavior make it susceptible to falling back below this level.
If Bitcoin fails to secure $108,000 as support, the next support level could be around $105,622, with a further decline potentially pushing the price down to $102,734.
The impact of whale selling and LTH behavior may drive this downward movement if the market sentiment turns more bearish.
On the other hand, if institutional demand continues to rise and outpaces the selling pressure from whales and LTHs, Bitcoin could break through the $109,476 resistance.
A strong push past this level would pave the way for Bitcoin to reach $110,000, which would invalidate the current bearish thesis and continue the upward momentum.
As May comes to a close, many crypto tokens are approaching major developments. Altcoins aim to use these milestones as catalysts to drive their prices higher, following Bitcoin’s recent momentum.
BeInCrypto has analyzed three such altcoins for investors to watch as Q2 comes closer to an end.
BNB
BNB price is expected to surge soon, driven by the upcoming Maxwell hard fork on Binance Smart Chain (BSC). This upgrade promises faster block times, improved network efficiency, and smoother overall performance, which could boost investor confidence and usage of the platform.
The Maxwell hard fork could serve as a key catalyst for increased chain activity. Currently trading at $672, BNB faces resistance levels at $686 and $700. A strong market response to the upgrade may close the 18% gap to BNB’s all-time high (ATH) of $793.
However, if the hardfork’s reception is lukewarm, BNB may remain stuck below $686. This could invalidate the bullish outlook and stall the ongoing uptrend, as traders wait for clearer signs of sustained momentum.
Zilliqa (ZIL)
ZIL’s price has declined 14.7% over the last two weeks, dropping from $0.0149 to $0.0127. This fall is likely due to delays in the Zilliqa 2.0 mainnet launch. However, any positive update on the migration could trigger renewed bullish momentum for the token.
Investors should watch for news on Zilliqa 2.0, as favorable developments may push ZIL’s price toward resistance at $0.0137. Breaking this level could reinstate bullish sentiment and signal a potential recovery for the altcoin.
If ZIL fails to capitalize on momentum, the price may consolidate between $0.0125 and $0.0137. Such sideways movement would weaken the bullish outlook, suggesting a period of uncertainty before the next major move.
Optimism (OP)
OP price has remained mostly flat recently, but upcoming events may spark bullish momentum. The scheduled unlock of 31.34 million OP tokens this week, worth $24.22 million, could drive a price surge as investors prepare for increased supply and activity.
Currently, OP trades above the Ichimoku Cloud, indicating potential bullish strength. This technical setup suggests OP could break past the $0.80 resistance and continue climbing toward the $0.90 level, attracting more investor interest.
However, failure to breach $0.80 would invalidate the bullish outlook. In that case, the price could drop to $0.69 or even lower, signaling potential weakness and a need for caution among traders.
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Ripple has identified a critical supply chain attack on the XRP Ledger. This vulnerability doesn’t impact the entire Ledger, only DeFi wallets using the official xrpl.js package from NPM (Node Package Manager).
It’s unclear how much user money was compromised in this sophisticated attack, but Ripple claims that it deprecated the compromised packages. Several major DeFi wallets didn’t download this package, and no huge thefts have been reported yet.
Security Breach on the XRP Ledger
This XRPL breach was first identified by Aikido, a blockchain security firm. It found five suspicious updates to the xrpls.js package on Ripple’s NPM.
This is Ripple’s official software development kit, featuring more than 140,000 downloads weekly. Hackers installed a sophisticated backdoor into this package, enabling private key theft and wallet access.
A breach of this nature represents a dire threat to XRP, to the extent that Ripple CTO David Schwartz posted official warnings about it. Mayukha Vadari, a senior software engineer with the firm, also went into greater detail about the nature of this vulnerability.
The XRP Ledger itself is unaffected by this. The malware packages only affect services that use xrpl.js and upgraded to the malicious versions that were published less than 24 hours ago. Github remains safe, only npm was compromised.
At first, this might seem like a small issue, as the breach didn’t directly harm the XRP Ledger (XRPL). However, this hack was propagated through Ripple’s official channels, exposing many users to harm.
To get a sense of the scale, DeFi wallets on XRPL currently hold about $80 million in user deposits. Accessing a tiny chunk of this sum would indeed be a huge theft.
NPM is the distribution system, and compromising a high-trust package in it creates a powerful attack vector—a supply chain attack targeting developers and infrastructure rather than end-users directly.
A compromised NPM package can affect thousands of apps. When an attacker injects malicious code, like a backdoor, into a popular NPM package, any application or developer that installs or updates that package unknowingly introduces the malware into its own environment.
The XRP Ledger Foundation confirmed that several major DeFi wallets were not exposed and further stated that it deprecated the compromised xrpl.js versions. It also plans to publish a full postmortem analysis.
Also, hackers managed to compromise the official library for DeFi protocols that wish to interact with XRP. A sophisticated operation like that could have consequences.
