Is Upbit secretly 'manipulating' XRP prices? Revealing data that surprises investors.

Dom, an independent market analyst specializing in following on-chain order flow data, stated that the South Korean exchange Upbit may currently be playing a significant role in adjusting the spot price of XRP – the fifth largest cryptocurrency in the world by market capitalization.

In a series of posts on X, Dom announced the chart of the cumulative volume difference (CVD) across eight exchanges, showing that selling pressure from Upbit is easing as XRP hits a local bottom.

Is Upbit secretly “manipulating” the price of XRP?

Analyst Dom commented:

“The Upbit exchange in South Korea may have more control over the price of XRP than we think. As soon as they stopped the selling pressure, the price immediately bottomed out – even though the selling pressure on Binance has not yet cooled down.”

He added that after that point, the price of XRP experienced a slight recovery, while signs of an algorithmic buy (TWAP) appeared on Coinbase with about 15 million dollars worth of XRP being accumulated.

The 48-hour chart (2–4/8) records the net buying and selling trends on exchanges Binance, Coinbase, Bybit, OKX, Kraken, Bitstamp, and Upbit:

The supply force from the Korean market is gradually weakening, thus removing an important barrier to XRP prices, despite the selling pressure on Binance still being present.

This is not the first time Dom has spoken about the special influence of Upbit on the price of XRP. In April 2024, he noted a massive net sell-off of up to 220 million XRP since April 11, equivalent to over 500 million USD at that time.

In just 24 hours on August 2, Upbit continued to attract attention by offloading a net 40 million XRP, a figure that even surpasses the total net selling volume of all other exchanges combined.

Previous snapshots also showed a similar trend: a net sale of 50 million and 30 million XRP on April 6 and 16, with sell orders accounting for more than half of the total transactions. This data reinforces the view that the cash flow from Upbit may be playing a key role in shaping the global price of XRP.

Why is Upbit important for XRP?

Upbit is currently among the top cryptocurrency exchanges in the world with:

These numbers show that the South Korean market has a special level of “enthusiasm” for XRP, and the flow of KRW is playing a significant role in impacting the global price – something that many liquidity providers have observed since 2023.

Although the data is not sufficient to prove a direct causal relationship, this model highlights an important fact that many liquidity providers have observed since 2023: regional exchanges can completely dominate the flow of a specific asset, even if their overall market share in the global market does not seem very large. With XRP, the persistent enthusiasm of Korean retail investors – nurtured since the price increase cycle of 2017 – continues to sustain and inject a significant amount of capital into the KRW market during the current period. Therefore, whenever this flow of funds reverses – as data from Dom’s dashboard shows – global price fluctuations almost immediately react accordingly.

The question arises: if Upbit truly has a significant impact on XRP, could this be the “key” to predicting the next reversal phases of this coin?

Emma