XRP’s NUPL Signals a Critical Psychological Shift
Analyst Ali Martinez recently shared particularly revealing on-chain data. Indeed, the NUPL of long-term XRP holders has dropped below the 0.5 threshold. This officially marks the transition into a phase of rising anxiety.
Net Unrealized Profit/Loss measures the difference between unrealized profits and losses across the entire network. This indicator precisely identifies where investors sit emotionally in the market cycle. A NUPL above 0.5 generally reflects optimism and strong conviction. Conversely, a drop below this level indicates that holders are no longer comfortably in positive territory.
This downward breach of the 0.5 threshold concretely means that a significant portion of the market is losing confidence as unrealized gains evaporate. Investors who previously showed substantial unrealized profits are seeing their margins compress drastically, pushing them toward a defensive psychological state. Historically, this configuration has often preceded either violent capitulations or opportunistic accumulation phases by strong hands.
The alignment between this NUPL signal and the test of support at $2 underscores the current fragility of XRP’s market structure. Anxiety can certainly fuel panic selling in the short term, but it has also marked during previous cycles the beginning of accumulation periods by patient investors who understand the cyclical nature inherent to crypto markets.
A Technical Structure Under Maximum Pressure
Analysis of the XRP chart reveals a clear series of successive lower lows accompanied by repeated failures to reclaim key moving averages. The price is currently hovering around $2.14, testing a support zone that has functioned repeatedly as both a psychological and structural floor throughout the year.
Every attempted breakout above the 50-day and 200-day MAs has resulted in sharp rejection, confirming that momentum remains firmly on the sellers’ side. Volume has gradually increased during recent declines, suggesting that selling stems more from capitulation than from simple tactical profit-taking.
The violent flash crash to $1.20 in October remains etched in memory as an episode of extreme liquidity stress. Although XRP quickly recovered from this anomaly, the event highlighted the underlying fragility of the market structure. Since then, no sustainable bullish trend has established itself, with price instead forming a compressed consolidation below major moving averages.
If the $2 level gives way decisively with volume, the next liquidity pockets sit around $1.75 to $1.90, where institutional buyers had previously stepped in. Conversely, holding above $2 would keep alive the hypothesis of a recovery, especially if the general sentiment of the crypto market stabilizes in the coming weeks.
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