TL;DR

• XRP whales, or those holding at least 10,000 tokens, have continued to accumulate in recent months, as the total number of such wallets now exceeds 300,000.
• Although XRP’s price has remained relatively sluggish on a weekly scale, industry experts believe whale accumulation is “insanely bullish.”

As the graph below will show you, XRP whales went on a substantial buying spree after the US elections, which was somewhat expected given the anticipation for big regulatory changes in the country that could affect domestic crypto businesses, such as Ripple.

After a minor hiatus in December when the total number of such investors dropped, they returned in full force at the start of 2025 and haven’t looked back since, aside from some minor deviations.

Data from Glassnode shows that the number of addresses holding over 10,000 XRP has gone above 300,000, which is a record of its own. According to popular industry commentator Amonyx, this is “insanely bullish” as it serves as “absolute proof of surging investor confidence.”

INSANELY BULLISH: #XRP whales are showing up BIG time!

According to Glassnode, the number of addresses holding 10K+ XRP just smashed past 300K — absolute proof of surging investor confidence.

The big money knows what’s coming. Do you? pic.twitter.com/u1cVJApFjg

— Amonyx (@amonbuy) May 3, 2025

Recall that whales bought over 900,000,000 XRP in April alone. In USD terms, this massive fortune was worth close to $2 billion.

With the SEC legal case seemingly behind Ripple, the company is now focused on expansion after the acquisition of Hidden Road and the failed attempt to take over Circle. The XRP Army, on the other hand, is anticipating the approval of a spot ETF after the recent good news on the futures ETF front.

However, the US securities regulator delayed making a decision on Franklin Templeton’s XRP ETF applications and the new deadline is set for mid-June. ETF experts believe the summer of 2025 will see the approval of numerous such financial vehicles tracking the performance of various cryptocurrencies, including XRP.

Maybe that’s what the “big money” is preparing for.

These are positive signals indicating more growth in long-term price support for Solana tokens.

The growth in the stablecoin market cap on the Solana ecosystem in 2025 has been absolutely staggering. More details on that are below. But, these are the kind of healthy Web3 indicators that help evaluate network effects and user activity for financial risk assessment.

Solana prices have been trending along with the broad crypto market over the past 12 months. But they may be on a trajectory to outperform many other altcoins in Q2 2025.

Here are five reasons why:

1. Bullish Long Term SOL Cup and Handle Pattern

Zooming out, #Solana $SOL appears to form a textbook-perfect cup and handle pattern! pic.twitter.com/91oYYgY0yL

— Ali (@ali_charts) April 28, 2025

On Apr. 28, popular Crypto X chart technical analyst Ali Martinez (“Ali Charts”) posted an interesting observation to some 136K followers..

The Solana price chart does certainly form a bullish cup and handle pattern starting around Oct. 2022. The cup completes in Nov. 2024, and the handle forms during market panic after Trump took office.

This chart pattern is a classic technical analysis signal of a bullish reversal about to begin in exchange markets. The fact that the pattern spans some two-and-a-half years does not discredit its usefulness as a price signal for Solana in May.

This classically reliable pattern usually becomes more reliable the longer it takes to form.

Ali added that the Bollinger Bands squeezing the middle on the 4-hour chart for SOL tokens also smelled like something is cooking in Solana markets.

The Bollinger Bands are squeezing on the 4-hour chart for #Solana $SOL, signaling that a major price move could be imminent. pic.twitter.com/47Tq593su6

— Ali (@ali_charts) April 30, 2025

2. Solana Tokenized Stocks Announcement

1/4 @solanainstitute, @superstatefunds and @orca_so, with support from @LowensteinLLP, have submitted a proposal to the SEC – dubbed Project Open – for a pilot project to enable the issuance and trading of equity securities on public blockchain networks like @solana.

— Solana Policy Institute (@SolanaInstitute) April 30, 2025

Tokenized contracts stand to transform the world even more than Bitcoin’s settlement-based finance rocked the system. One of the most abundant use cases for that would be tokenized stocks.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said in his annual letter to shareholders in April that tokenizing stocks will revolutionize financial markets. In a powerful statement, Fink wrote:

“Every stock, every bond, every fund—every asset—can be tokenized. If they are, it will revolutionize investing. Markets wouldn’t need to close. Transactions that currently take days would clear in seconds. And billions of dollars currently immobilized by settlement delays could be reinvested immediately back into the economy, generating more growth.”

The Solana Policy Institute and three other organizations announced on Apr. 30 a proposal submitted to the SEC called “Project Open.” The proposal is for a product that allows Solana to issue tokens for stocks that users can trade on the blockchain.

3. Bloomberg SOL ETF Approval Odds Jump to 90%

Would love to hear directly from Atkins, but all good chance of happening. Here’s our latest odds of approval for all the dif spot ETFs via @JSeyff https://t.co/nLhYJJmO9U pic.twitter.com/4AcJVwhics

— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) April 30, 2025

Meanwhile, on Apr. 29, Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst for Bloomberg, posted the latest approval odds from Bloomberg Intelligence for active crypto ETF applications at the SEC.

Bloomberg’s forecast for a Solana ETF approval from the SEC in 2025 jumped to 90%. Although there are currently more Ripple ETF applications than Solana, Bloomberg’s odds for a SOL ETF were higher, with XRP at 85%.

Solana tops the odds among altcoins at 90%, but Avalanche and Cardano have a 75% chance of approval, according to Bloomberg’s current estimation. When Bitcoin’s ETFs went live in Q1 2024, its price went on a 12-month historic rally.

4. Solana Stablecoin Market Cap Is Spacewalking

#Solana stablecoin supply is at all time high of $11.7 billion pic.twitter.com/tSZmWeJ8O4

— MartyParty (@martypartymusic) February 8, 2025

In addition to the technical and derivatives market signals, and Solana ecosystem development with more use cases, data from DeFiLlama shows an utterly significant increase in such stablecoins from under $5 billion a year ago to above $13 billion in May.

Web3 users like stablecoins for making currency swaps convenient and sheltering their money from market volatility while having it ready to deploy to take advantage of opportunities.

Having that much liquidity suddenly available for trading in under 12 months is an item of fundamental analysis for the bullish column for Solana this quarter.

Earlier in the week, ex-Bitmex CEO Arthur Hayes laid out his most audacious Bitcoin (BTC) forecast yet: a staggering $1 million price tag by 2028.

He didn’t back down when pressed days later in a follow-up interview with analyst Kyle Chassé, instead laying out a roadmap for how global financial chaos will make it inevitable.

The $1 Million Thesis

In a series of posts on X, Chassé unpacked Hayes’ thought process, revealing the Maelstrom CIO’s prediction envisions a radical scenario where BTC is no longer just a speculative asset, but the ultimate hedge against a global financial system possibly teetering on collapse.

According to Hayes, the world is splitting into economic blocs, with the U.S. and China locked in a slow-motion decoupling. If traditional systems falter, the crypto investor expects the ensuing Treasury buybacks, bond market panic, and what he calls “monetary detonation” will nudge institutions to flee to BTC.

“Bitcoin isn’t risk-on anymore,” Chassé echoed. “It’s system-off.”

In his post, the crypto influencer explained that Hayes’ estimations will possibly play out in two phases: a surge to $250,000 by late 2025 as liquidity floods markets, followed by a moonshot to seven figures triggered by “ballooning deficits, debasement, and unstoppable digital scarcity.”

Corporate Forecasts

While some may consider the BitMEX co-founder’s view too ambitious, it’s not entirely disconnected from where parts of the traditional financial world see Bitcoin heading. Several firms have recently upgraded their BTC price targets amid strong demand for spot Bitcoin ETFs, reduced post-halving supply, and favorable macro backdrops.

Fundstrat’s Tom Lee and H.C. Wainwright both land near Hayes’ interim target, forecasting $225,000 to $250,000 for 2025. BlackRock and Social Capital CEO Chamath Palihapitiya come closest to Hayes’s million-dollar prediction at $700,000 and $500,000, respectively.

Meanwhile, Standard-Chartered and Matrixport have lifted their year-end targets to $200,000, while VanEck sees the possibility of a cycle top that reaches as high as $250,000.

While the projections fall far short of the $1 million mark, they are finally recognizing BTC’s potential to move well beyond its previous all-time highs.