Bitcoin Flat Near $61K as Whales Continue to Accumulate; XRP Down 10% as SEC Appeals Case

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Bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) continued in the red at the start of Asian trading hours Thursday as the market withstood another sell-off.
BTC is flat, trading above $61,100, while ETH is down 4% and trading at $2,390. Crypto markets took a hit from Tuesday night after Irani airstrikes on Israel, which the latter has vowed to retaliate, in a move that has dented a rally in risk assets, including bitcoin.
However, whales continue to accumulate bitcoin at unprecedented rates despite the macro environment and market dullness, CryptoQuant founder Ki Young-Ju said in an X post.
Whales colloquially refer to influential entities that hold largest amounts of any asset – and on-chain data shows new bitcoin whales are making sizeable purchases in anticipation of a bull run ahead.
The CoinDesk 20 (CD20), a measure of the performance of the largest digital assets, was down over 3% as investors continue to sell most major cryptocurrencies.
Outflows from the BTC exchange-traded funds (ETFs) continued with $91.76 million in outflow during the Wednesday U.S. trading day. Ether ETFs experienced the opposite, with inflows of $14.45 million, breaking a two-day streak of outflow.
XRP plunged more than 10% in the past 24 hours after the U.S. SEC said on Wednesday that it is appealing a court ruling restricting its ability to regulate cryptocurrency markets. The SEC will ask the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review a July 2023 decision that the XRP token sold by Ripple Labs on public exchanges did not meet the legal definition of a security.
Memecoin mog (MOG), the second-largest cat-themed token behind popcat (POPCAT), saw little price movement after getting an automated mention from Republican candidate Donald Trump’s X account. Trump’s account seems to be sending a reply to any account that liked his tweet
A Polymarket market tracking Trump’s mention of the word “mog” – or related adjectives – before December 31 was unchanged at 13% of “yes” votes, leading to some drama among voters.
Elsewhere in the market, LDO, the native token of non-custodial staking solution Lido, is down nearly 9%, following Ether’s decline.
Artificial Intelligence tokens are also not moving, despite an announcement from OpenAI that it had raised $6.6 billion at a valuation of $157 billion.
CoinGecko data shows that the category, which includes (NEAR), {{TAO}}, and (ICP) is down 1.8%. Worldcoin, which was founded by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, but has no formal ties otherwise to OpenAI, is down 4%.
UPDATE (Oct 3, 07:00 UTC): Updates eighth paragraph to clarify Donald Trump mentioning Mog on X was an automated response.
Edited by Parikshit Mishra.
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Shaurya is the Deputy Managing Editor for the Data & Tokens team, focusing on decentralized finance, markets, on-chain data, and governance across all major and minor blockchains.