Crypto chartist Dark Defender says XRP’s current monthly structure has flipped back to the same high-momentum regime that preceded its 2017–2018 vertical run, arguing that a fresh impulsive wave is underway after last year’s breakout. In a detailed thread accompanying a multi-year monthly chart, the analyst urged followers to segment XRP’s history into “Left – Middle – Right,” contrasting a 2017 impulsive setup, a 2021 corrective detour, and what he calls today’s renewed continuation phase.
XRP Is Repeating 2017
On the left side of the chart, Dark Defender highlights the 2017 template: candles closing above prior highs, price holding above Ichimoku Cloud support, elevated Relative Strength Index, and monthly closes above a key exponential moving average. “XRP had an impulsive wave by the end of 2017. This caused the RSI spike with a huge momentum… Volume and the speed were high, so was Momentum,” he wrote, adding that the thrust concluded a “five-wave” advance before a multi-month triangle consolidation formed. The RSI, he noted, flattened but stayed above his smoothed baseline, which he interprets as a bullish continuation signal rather than exhaustion.
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The middle section—anchored around 2021—marks the counterpoint. Dark Defender characterizes this period as a corrective A-B structure, with an A-wave decline from the 2018 peak and a B-wave rally that topped at $1.96. Momentum signatures weakened, and the trend lost its structural supports. “First and foremost, the structure in 2021 was a CORRECTIVE STRUCTURE,” he wrote.
“The price was below the Ichimoku Clouds, hence bearish… The Triangle did not have any candles above the orange resistance… The exponential moving average… was broken downside.” He also reminds readers that “the lawsuit was ongoing,” situating the pattern in a period of headline risk and depressed trend quality.
The right-hand panel is where his thesis turns decisively bullish. Dark Defender says a “CRUCIAL BREAK” he flagged on November 10, 2024 preceded a lasting upside extension that, in his view, reestablished an impulsive regime. “We announced a CRUCIAL BREAK… that XRP was going to break the ATH. Yes, 1 day before the extensive break,” he wrote, linking back to his prior post.
He argues that the subsequent advance delivered the necessary checklist for trend validation: monthly Heikin Ashi closes above previous highs, price reclaiming and holding above the Ichimoku Cloud, a series of closes above the red EMA baseline, and a resurgent RSI profile that he explicitly compares to the 2017 impulse. “The IMPULSIVE WAVE structure has not yet been finalised,” he added, cautioning that a February 2025 pullback was corrective within a larger advance rather than the end of the move.
Technically, the thread’s comparative anatomy hinges on consistent signals across timeframes and tools. In 2017 and again now, candles closed above resistance within triangle setups instead of failing at the boundary; price lived above Cloud support rather than beneath it; and the moving-average “red line” acted as dynamic support rather than resistance.
Meanwhile, the RSI sequence that degraded in 2021—“medium strength… followed by the low strength”—has flipped back to what he calls a “similar high momentum like in 2017, but not in 2021.” In his summary, the 2017 segment was “entirely an impulsive 5 Wave structure,” 2021 was “Corrective and therefore Weak,” and 2024–2025 reflects a “NEW IMPULSIVE STRUCTURE” with continuation potential.
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The analyst’s tone is unambiguously constructive. “Considering all the above facts, I remain bullish on XRP and the broader blockchain,” he wrote. “We are entering a new era… and I think the future of Ripple and XRP is bright, following the lodestar, Polaris.” He closes with a characteristic refrain to “think positively,” but the core of the argument rests on the checklist of trend-confirmation items now in place on the monthly chart.
Whether XRP ultimately reproduces the magnitude of its 2017 move will depend on how long those signals persist—monthly closes, momentum sustainability above the Cloud, and respect for the EMA baseline—yet Dark Defender’s comparative framework is explicit: the market conditions that fostered XRP’s last explosive phase are, in his reading, back on the board.
While the analyst refrained from naming an explicit price target in his latest post, he had outlined one earlier this month. In an October 2 post on X, Dark Defender wrote, “We were right on XRP. RSI weekly break, weekly trend break, targets are clear. Nothing can stop what’s coming,” sharing a projected $10.47 target as the culmination of XRP’s anticipated wave-5 structure.
At press time, XRP traded at $2.80.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
