For the past six months, XRP (CRYPTO:XRP) slid lower as the Iran war battered the whole market, and plenty of holders gave up and sold. However, the biggest holders did the exact opposite.
Wallets holding a million coins or more now own almost three-quarters of all the XRP in existence, and they did that by buying through the worst of it, scooping up 1.53 billion coins while everyone else was selling. Now that XRP has climbed back above $1.20 this week, that patience is paying off.
So what does it mean when so much of the supply ends up in so few wallets? Here’s why the biggest holders kept buying when no one else would.
Why XRP’s Biggest Holders Kept Buying Through the Crash
A wallet holding a million XRP is worth well over a million dollars at today’s price, so this group is mostly high-conviction investors and funds, not casual buyers, along with some exchange wallets holding customer money. Together they now hold 74.1% of all XRP, according to on-chain tracker Santiment.
What makes that number striking is how they reached it. Through the selloff that dragged XRP down to its lowest levels of the year, smaller holders were sending their coins to exchanges to sell, while the biggest wallets quietly added 1.53 billion XRP over six months. Even in early June, as nervous holders kept cashing out, the large wallets kept buying.
Traders watch splits like this closely, because big holders buying into fear usually means they expect higher prices later. And this isn’t a one-off, as these wallets have been adding XRP steadily since mid-2024, holding course through the SEC settlement and every dip since, including the February crash that briefly scared off 4,500 of them before the buying picked right back up.
Is Heavy Whale Concentration Good or Risky for XRP?
On the upside, when most of the supply is locked up in wallets that aren’t selling, there’s less XRP floating around for everyone else to buy, so it takes less new money to push the price up. This week’s jump is a good example, because when demand came back, it ran into a thin supply, and the price popped.
The trouble is that the same fact works in reverse, because the big holders who can starve the market of supply can also flood it, and if they decide to sell, they move the price higher very quick, while regular holders get no warning. That is exactly what happened late last year, when whales accumulated heavily and then sold as the XRP price rose, dropping their holdings to a multi-month low.
It’s also worth remembering that the 74% isn’t all true belief in XRP, because some of those big wallets belong to exchanges holding pooled customer funds, and that money can move for reasons that have nothing to do with anyone betting on the coin.
What Whale Accumulation Signals for XRP’s Price
On balance, having the biggest wallets hold 74% of the supply is a genuine show of conviction from the people with the most on the line, and the early payoff is already showing on the charts. But it’s conviction with a catch, because the tight supply that lifted the price this week is the same thing that could sink it if those holders change their minds.
What the big wallets do from here is the thing to follow. If they keep adding now that XRP has bounced, the accumulation was them positioning for a longer move higher. But if they start selling into the rally instead, it was patient bottom-buying cashing out, and the float that has been holding the price up gets looser. Either way, these wallets now hold enough of the supply that their next move will shape where the XRP price goes more than anything else on the chart.
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