In this wave of price movement, the sweet part is the sugar coating, the bitter part is the shrapnel.

A small pump gets your heart racing, you get excited and go all-in, only to realize—oh, you were just the fuel all along.

The current signals on the market are very clear: bears are in control. The big players have no intention of driving the price up to bail you out; they're waiting for the chance to dump their bags. The most common mistake for retail investors? Seeing a bounce and thinking "this time is different," then rushing in to catch the falling knife—right into the trap. As long as the overall trend is still bearish, every pump should be seen first as a "window to reduce positions" and a "bull trap," not the start of a bull market.

What are the big players doing? Waiting for you to go long, then offloading their holdings in batches.

The logic is simple:
Start with a small rebound, create some warm sentiment, make the market look "rock-solid," and lure in momentum chasers;
Once long positions pile up at the top and there's enough liquidity, the big players start dumping—they sell as much as you buy;
When the price can’t hold, they dump again, wiping out all the latecomer longs.

Right now, it’s not that there’s no one to catch XRP, it’s that the whales think there aren’t enough bagholders yet. So they keep shaking and testing, making more people think "it’s about to take off."

Where are the key levels?
Upper bear resistance zones:
2.0350–2.0504
2.0658–2.0999
2.0946–2.1130
2.1931–2.214

These ranges are like layers of ice. If the price hits them, odds are it’ll get pushed back down.