XRP may be holding above the $2 price mark for a brief period, but the leading altcoin is still facing heightened bearish pressures at that level due to a broader market pullback on Monday. Even with the ongoing downward trend in price, XRP is still experiencing robust engagement as evidenced by the massive surge in activity on the XRP Ledger.

An Explosive uptick In XRP Ledger’s Activity

Prices are constantly dwindling along with the entire crypto market, but the XRP Ledger is seeing sharp engagement within the bearish period. After months of quiet and reduced adoption, the Ledger has roared back to life, recording one of its strongest growth waves yet.

Arthur, a community member and official partner of the BingX cryptocurrency exchange, shared this surge in activity on the social media platform X. This isn’t a mild rise; it’s a growth wave with significant weight behind it, the kind that indicates an expanding utility rather than fleeting speculation.

Furthermore, the sharp growth in activity suggests that more investors are choosing to conduct their day-to-day XRP operations on the Ledger, reflecting a renewed conviction in the network. The Ledger’s current activity spike is centered around the rise in Account Set transactions to a point not seen in years.

After navigating through XRPL metrics, the expert revealed that more than 40,000 Account Set transactions were carried out on the Ledger, marking its highest level in years. Such a massive wave of transactions to a new peak suggests that the Ledger may be speeding into its next phase in a market where many chains find it difficult to sustain momentum.

At the same time, there was also a surge in Automated Market Maker (AMM) bids just after November 23 concluded, indicating that preparations are taking place on the network. With Ripple’s stablecoin RLUSD approvals, AMM rollout, and the onboarding of institutional investors at an accelerated rate, it simply implies that the Ledger is picking up pace. 

Open Interest Suffers A Steep Decline

While the price of XRP has pulled back, the decline appears to be heavily impacting investors’ sentiment toward the altcoin. Its derivatives market has significantly lost its weight in a single and steep decline as Open Interest (OI) experiences a sharp drop.

In a report from Glassnode, a leading on-chain data analytics platform, the token’s futures open interest fell from 1.7 billion XRP in early October to 0.7 billion XRP by the end of November. This figure represents a more than 59% flush out from October to November alone.

The funding rates have also followed suit, recording a drop from 0.001% to 0.001% in the 7-day Simple Moving Average (SMA). A combination of the drop in open interest and funding rates marks a structural pause in the altcoin’s speculators’ appetite to bet heavily on an upward direction. At the time of writing, the altcoin was trading at $2.02 after falling by over 1% in the last 24 hours.

Russian institutions have responded to a call from а public movement for joint efforts to identify cryptocurrency transfers related to drug trade. The anti-drug organization, Stopnarkotik, recently asked the interior ministry and the central bank to investigate alleged connections between U.S.-sanctioned crypto exchange Suex and a darknet market operating in the region.

Russian Authorities Respond to Stopnarkotik’s Request for Action Against Drug Trade

The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation (MVD) and Bank of Russia have agreed to cooperate with the All-Russian Public Movement Stopnarkotik on identifying financial flows involving cryptocurrencies obtained as a result of drug sales. The Russian online news portal Lenta.ru reported on the agreement, quoting a letter from a high-ranking MVD official.

The letter signed by Major General Andrei Yanishevsky, head of the Drug Control Department at the Interior Ministry, has been issued after a working meeting with representatives of the anti-drug organization. It comes in response to Stopnarkotik’s call for the two institutions to carry out an investigation focused on Suex, a Russia-based OTC crypto broker, and its links to other companies and banks.

In September, the U.S. Treasury Department blacklisted the Czech-registered entity Suex OTC s.r.o. which operates out of physical offices in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. The crypto platform is suspected of processing hundreds of millions of dollars in coin transactions related to scams, ransomware attacks, darknet markets, and the infamous Russian BTC-e exchange.

Since launching in 2018, Suex is believed to have received over $481 million in BTC alone. Close to $13 million came from ransomware operators such as Ryuk, Conti, and Maze, over $24 million was sent by crypto scams like Finiko, $20 million came from mixers, and another $20 million from darknet markets such as the Russia-targeting Hydra, blockchain forensics firm Chainalysis detailed in a report.

In its request to the Russian authorities, following the announcement of the U.S. sanctions, Stopnarkotik noted that Suex had been “involved in money laundering for the largest drug-selling platform.” The organization pointed out that the market’s drug trafficking in the Russian Federation amounts to an estimated $1.5 billion a year or more.

It also mentioned the name of one of Suex’s co-founders and highlighted its alleged connections with other crypto companies and financial institutions such as Exmo, a major digital asset exchange in Eastern Europe, financial services company Qiwi, a leading payment provider in Russia and the CIS countries, as well as the Ukraine-based Concord Bank.

Stopnarkotik asked Bank of Russia to provide its assessment on the matter, check if the operations of Suex and other entities are being conducted in accordance with the law in Russia, and consider blocking Russian payments to a Ukrainian organization.

“We received a response from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Central Bank. We also had a personal meeting with the Ministry of Internal Affairs so that they had an understanding of how we receive information, including about money laundering,” the movement’s chairman, Sergei Polozov, has been quoted as saying. He added that the Russian Interior Ministry is ready to accept Stopnarkotik’s data and work together with the organization.

Do you expect the cooperation between Stopnarkotik and Russian government institutions to develop further? Tell us in the comments section below.