XRP Falls 69% From January Peak As Whales Accumulate 380 Million Tokens

• On-chain data reveals that large XRP holders accumulated over 380 million tokens during the asset's 69% decline to $0.99, contrasting sharply with retail panic selling that triggered $1.5 billion in leveraged liquidations.
• Ripple recommends withdrawing the XChainBridge amendment due to lack of developer demand and maintenance burdens, citing security risks associated with cross-chain bridges.
• Large XRP holders and spot ETFs are accumulating tokens while exchange balances decline, providing structural support for a potential breakout above the critical $1.50 resistance level.
• Mastercard's sponsorship of an XRP Ledger hackathon and its expansion of settlement capabilities to regulated stablecoins like RLUSD strengthen the institutional utility narrative for XRP.
• Bitcoin has demonstrated superior resilience in 2026 compared to Ethereum and XRP, supported by strong institutional demand via spot ETFs.

XRP experienced a significant correction, dropping 69% from its January peak to $0.99 on August 11, before rebounding to $1.50.

This sharp sell-off triggered over $1.5 billion in leveraged liquidations, reflecting intense stress among retail traders and short-sellers.

However, on-chain data indicates a divergent behavior among large wallet holders, who viewed the downturn as an accumulation opportunity.

Large holders added more than 380 million XRP over several weeks, with wallets holding between 1 million and 10 million XRP collectively accumulating approximately 642 million XRP in a single month.

The number of wallets holding at least 1 million XRP rose above 2,000, with total holdings nearing 8 billion XRP, suggesting that institutional or high-net-worth actors were positioning themselves ahead of a potential recovery.

Exchange-held XRP balances decreased from 15.66 billion to 15.46 billion, signaling reduced sell-side liquidity.

Concurrently, large-value transactions on the XRP Ledger surged by 280% in a 24-hour period, indicating heightened institutional activity.

Spot XRP ETFs also increased holdings by nearly 20 million tokens, reinforcing the supply squeeze narrative.

Institutional demand via exchange-traded funds continues to support the asset, with U.S. spot XRP ETFs recording their strongest weekly net inflows in over three months.

Funds attracted approximately $1.55 billion in cumulative inflows, including $39.78 million in a single week.

This positive ETF flow divergence, occurring even as the price retreated, suggests underlying institutional interest that counters recent price pullbacks.

Despite the price action, XRP has retreated from its August highs, trading around $1.38–$1.39 after slipping below the $1.40 level.

The token peaked at $1.70 on August 22 but faced selling pressure as broader crypto risk appetite weakened.

The recent pullback found a low near $1.36, establishing an immediate technical support level.

Early August accumulation by large holders, who added roughly 190 million tokens in one day, helped fuel the initial rally, but current market conditions present a more difficult test.

Technically, XRP has formed a broad base in the $1.00-$1.10 demand zone before breaking above its descending trendline.

The price is currently testing the $1.45-$1.50 region, a former resistance area.

A decisive breakout above $1.50-$1.55 is identified as the key trigger for the next leg up, targeting the $1.60-$1.70 zone.

If buyers sustain momentum through this area, the path opens toward $1.80 and the psychological $2.00 resistance.

Near-term caution is warranted due to the Relative Strength Index (RSI) being above 80, suggesting the asset is overbought.

Consolidation or a retest of the reclaimed $1.40-$1.45 support is possible before another breakout attempt.

A sustained loss below $1.40 would weaken the immediate structure, exposing $1.20-$1.25 support.

However, the combination of ETF inflows, whale accumulation, and declining exchange supply provides a stronger foundation for the rally than a purely speculative bounce.

Why Is Ripple Withdrawing The XChainBridge Amendment?

Ripple has initiated a process to withdraw the XChainBridge amendment from the XRPL ledger.

The company cites a technical assessment that the feature lacks active usage and imposes unnecessary maintenance costs.

Initially, Ripple kept XLS-38 available for potential private sidechains and specialized networks unsupported by Axelar.

However, the company found no evidence of active projects requiring the native bridge, noting that no production deployment has identified XChainBridge as essential.

Maintaining the inactive implementation requires ongoing reviews, tests, and compatibility work whenever developers update xrpld.

Ripple argues this creates a maintenance burden without providing corresponding mainnet benefits.

Cross-chain systems present distinct risks, with bridge exploits causing over $4 billion in losses since 2021.

Consequently, verification design and operational security are central considerations.

The recommendation does not signal an abandonment of interoperability.

Instead, Ripple points to Axelar, Wormhole, zero-knowledge systems, and layer-2 designs as alternative approaches better suited to different security and privacy requirements.

Ripple cannot unilaterally remove XChainBridge, as the XRPL registry lists it as a pending amendment with a default "no" vote.

Ripple holds only one validator vote among independent participants.

XRPL amendments typically require support from over 80% of trusted validators for two continuous weeks to activate.

With 35 validators in the current default configuration, at least 29 affirmative votes are needed.

Ripple’s recommendation neither withdraws the amendment immediately nor forces opposition.

Validators independently decide which amendments their infrastructure supports.

Withdrawal will proceed through staged software changes.

Ripple proposed a pull request marking XChainBridge as obsolete in the xrpld codebase.

Servers upgrading to this release will automatically vote against activation.

Support will decline as validators install the updated software.

Once active validators recognize the amendment as obsolete, developers can remove the XChainBridge implementation and related code in a later release.

No deadline or final removal date has been announced.

How Are Institutional Developments Supporting XRP?

Mastercard has expanded its involvement in the XRP Ledger (XRPL) ecosystem by sponsoring an upcoming 36-hour hackathon in New York.

The event, scheduled for October 24–25, will focus on protocol development, agentic finance, and lending.

This sponsorship extends Mastercard’s existing infrastructure work with Ripple.

In June, the company announced plans to broaden settlement capabilities for regulated stablecoins, including Ripple USD (RLUSD), across multiple networks including the XRPL.

Additionally, Ripple, Mastercard, WebBank, and Gemini are exploring RLUSD-based settlement for card transactions on XRPL.

This remains an exploratory initiative rather than a confirmed commercial rollout.

Despite these institutional developments, XRP’s price has been constrained by broader market weakness.

The token peaked at $1.70 on August 22 but faced selling pressure as broader crypto risk appetite weakened.

Bitcoin has outperformed Ethereum and XRP in 2026, declining only about 12% from its January price compared to 20% for Ethereum and 24% for XRP.

This resilience is attributed to Bitcoin's strong institutional demand, evidenced by U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recording $242 million in net inflows on August 27.

Bitcoin trades around $77,676, Ethereum near $2,440, and XRP near $1.38.

All three have fallen from their January highs over the last seven months but have rallied significantly in the last two weeks.

Bitcoin rallied 22%, Ethereum 29%, and XRP 33%.

This recent bullish momentum followed the U.S. Treasury's announcement to double its long-end bond buybacks.

The announcement forced traders to close roughly $3.3 billion in short bets.

Comparing current prices to all-time highs reveals further divergence.

Bitcoin is about 38% below its October 2025 peak of $126,198.

Ethereum is 51% below its August 2025 high of $4,953, while XRP is 64% below its July 2025 peak of $3.84.

XRP's larger drop reflects its higher 2025 rally peak.

Ethereum may benefit from nearly 47% of its supply being staked and growing demand for tokenized assets.

XRP has seen over $155 million in ETF inflows over three weeks and could benefit from progress on the CLARITY Act.

Ripple's dollar-backed stablecoin, RLUSD, has surpassed $2 billion in market capitalization.

This marks an eightfold increase from April 2025 when it stood at approximately $250 million.

The stablecoin's growth of 31.45% over the last 30 days reflects its positioning as enterprise infrastructure for cross-border payments, treasury management, and institutional settlement.

The supply is distributed almost evenly across two networks, with approximately $1.05 billion on Ethereum and $963 million on the XRP Ledger.

This dual-native issuance strategy allows RLUSD to access Ethereum's large decentralized finance ecosystem while utilizing the XRP Ledger's fast and inexpensive settlement infrastructure.

This concentration means RLUSD now represents more than 90% of the stablecoin supply on the XRP Ledger.

Trading activity on the XRP Ledger has been heavily concentrated in the RLUSD-XRP pair, which generated approximately $900 million over six months.

This represents nearly 90% of RLUSD trading activity on the network.