Key Takeaways
- XRP millionaire wallets rose by 32 in three months as Santiment tracked continued whale accumulation.
- XRP trades near $1.02, down about 69% from its 2025 peak near $3.66.
- Large holders added 380M+ XRP last week even as 81% of Binance outflows went to self-custody.
Whale Wallets Keep Climbing Despite the Slump
The XRP Ledger’s wealthiest addresses are still adding to their positions even as the broader market struggles. Onchain analytics firm Santiment noted that the number of wallets holding at least 1 million XRP increased by 32 over the last three months. Over that same period, XRP’s total market capitalization dropped by a sizable 29%
The divergence isn’t new for XRP, as trackers have consistently shown large-holder cohorts expanding during price downturns over the past year, a trend some analysts read as quiet conviction rather than panic.
Numbers-wise, one can see that XRP is trading near $1.02, down roughly 69% from its 2025 peak of $3.66. The token has shed 5% to 8% over the past week and month alike, extending a slide that began after XRP retreated from a late-July peak near $1.16.
Institutional demand too has cooled as evidenced by XRP exchange-traded fund (ETF) inflows plunging 93% week-over-week, falling to about $1.01 million from $14.86 million the week before, while Grayscale’s XRP Trust logged over 100 million tokens in net outflows during the first half of 2026.
Weekend liquidations added another $9.48 million in forced selling, nearly all of it from long positions, and a stalled Clarity Act vote has removed a near-term catalyst traders had been counting on.
That weakness comes even though XRP’s biggest legal overhang is gone given that Ripple settled its SEC lawsuit last May, and spot ETFs that launched in November 2025 have pulled in more than $1.4 billion in cumulative inflows since.
Onchain behavior, on the other hand, has shown wallets holding between 10 million and 100 million XRP have added roughly 1.23 billion tokens since the start of 2026. More recently, large holders added 380 million XRP over the week leading into August 11, with 81% of Binance outflows in that stretch tied to large holders moving tokens into self-custody (a signal typically associated with long-term holding rather than short-term trading).
A Recurring Theme
Bitcoin.com News reported earlier this year that 42 new millionaire XRP wallets had entered the fray after a decline of roughly 784 addresses between October and December 2025. That earlier growth spurt also came as XRP’s price stayed flat to lower, reinforcing that large XRP holders have treated 2026’s weakness as an accumulation opportunity rather than a reason to exit.
The pattern isn’t unique to XRP, either, as Cryptoquant’s latest Smart Money Report found similar whale absorption underway in Bitcoin and Ethereum, and pegged XRP’s realized price, the average cost basis of coins that last moved onchain, at $0.75 versus a trading price near $1.10 in early August.
Cryptoquant has called that kind of supply absorption during price contractions a historical signal linked to the formation of market bottoms, though it stopped short of calling one for XRP specifically.
What Can Supporters Hinge on?
Traders are now watching the $1 support level that market analysts flagged this week, a threshold that has become a psychological floor after XRP’s steep pullback from last year’s peak. If millionaire wallets keep expanding while price stays under pressure, it would extend a divergence that has defined XRP’s year so far, one where onchain conviction and market price are telling two very different stories.
