Big Investors Accumulate 1.5B+ XRP, Now Hold 26.8% of XRP Supply

XRP Ledger whale and shark addresses have accumulated over 1.5 billion XRP since last October despite the network witnessing a persistent decline in whale transactions.

Notably, these addresses, holding between 100,000 and 100 million XRP, have augmented their balances over the past year, according to a disclosure from market intelligence resource Santiment.

Santiment confirmed that these key shark and whale addresses on the XRP Ledger have continued to amass more XRP tokens despite a considerable drop in whale transactions on the network compared to the levels witnessed in 2021 and 2022.

?? #XRPLedger is seeing less whale activity this year compared to 2021 & 2022. However, this hasn't stopped the key shark & whale addresses from accumulating more of the supply. Wallets with 100K-100M $XRP hold $7.89B in coins vs. $7.16B a year ago. https://t.co/NMnrTCTMUw pic.twitter.com/DSShcoFa8G

— Santiment (@santimentfeed) October 9, 2023

An Accumulation Trend

Data suggests that these wallets held a cumulative balance of $7.16 billion worth of XRP as of Oct. 9, 2022. This balance translated to 13.84 billion XRP tokens, with XRP changing hands at $0.5171 at the time. This cumulative holding has increased since then.

Per the latest data, these addresses now hold $7.89 billion worth of XRP. This balance amounted to 15.37 billion XRP against the price of $0.5132 at the time of Santiment’s disclosure. 

The disclosure confirms that these addresses have procured 1.53 billion XRP since last October. Due to this persistent accumulation trend, they now hold a whopping 26.8% of XRP’s supply, as opposed to the 24.1% rate recorded a year ago.

The Santiment chart further sheds light on the accumulation behavior of these wallets. Notably, they began amassing XRP aggressively in November 2022 amid the FTX implosion. This period saw the most significant spike in their holdings within this cycle.

Interestingly, their balance bumped from 24.28% of XRP’s supply on Nov. 6, 2022, to 25.96% on Dec. 29. This spike suggests that the addresses accumulated over 960 million XRP in less than two months. Their balance remained steady until another spike was seen in mid-July when XRP secured legal victory.

XRP Sees Declining Whale Txns

Santiment revealed that this accumulation trend prevailed despite a drop in whale transactions above $100K. For context, in 2021, the daily whale transactions averaged 9,000. The network witnessed noticeable spikes in these transactions between April and May, peaking at 28,000 on April 21, 2021.

The next year saw a considerable drop in whale transactions. However, the transactions still averaged 5,000 a day. However, Santiment noted that these transactions now average below 4,000 this year. Notably, Oct. 8 only saw 2,321 whale transactions.