XRP broke a level it hadn’t touched in over a year — And whales bought it

XRP (XRP) slid into the red over the past month while the rest of the major tokens posted modest gains. The token now sits near $1.

The divergence runs deeper on-chain. Large holders keep accumulating, yet spot ETF inflows have stalled, and Binance traders have turned to selling.

XRP Price Slides as Large Wallets Keep Buying

BeInCrypto reported that XRP's price briefly fell below $1 earlier this week. It was the token's first break under that level since late 2024.

The weakness runs deeper than one day. XRP has dropped by more than 5% over the past 30 days and by more than 3% over the past week.

Among the top 10 cryptocurrencies, XRP posted the second-steepest monthly fall. Hyperliquid (HYPE) dropped about 10%, and Dogecoin (DOGE) fell about 2%. Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Solana (SOL) all held modest gains.

As price action diverges from peers, the on-chain data shows a mixed picture. Santiment says the whales kept buying through the slide. 

The cohort holding at least 1 million XRP grew by 32 over three months. That came as market value fell by double digits.

“When million-XRP wallets rise while market cap falls, stronger hands are absorbing panic, patience is replacing simple price-related hype, and future volatility becomes more interesting for bulls,” the post read.

Exchange data reinforces the pattern. CryptoOnchain recently noted that Binance deposit addresses fell by about 96% relative to monthly and quarterly norms. Inflows and outflows dropped by 79% and 85%, respectively, versus their 90-day averages. 

• “The network is highly active, yet coins are not moving to exchanges to be sold,” the analyst said.

Santiment also notes network use rose as the price fell. Active addresses averaged about 35,700 a day in August, up from 26,400 in July. August 11 was the busiest day since June 5.

The bull case has holes

But the picture is not all that simple. Santiment highlighted that new address creation held flat near 2,260 per day in August, compared with 2,270 in July. 

“So the ‘rising user activity’ framing is half right. The existing base is transacting more, and the wallet count is not growing with it,” it added.

Derivatives flows also tilt toward sellers. On Binance, the taker buy/sell ratio fell to about 0.86, its lowest since May. 

“A reading below 1 indicates that the volume of sell orders executed by traders exceeds the volume of buy orders, reflecting clear selling pressure from traders executing trades directly,” Arab Chain wrote.

Cumulative volume delta backs this up. It sits near -4.15 million despite a 0.84 correlation with price.

“Despite the strong correlation between CVD and price, the CVD value remains in negative territory. This suggests that cumulative market flows are skewed towards selling, indicating that buyer activity has not yet been sufficient to shift the balance of flows into positive territory,” the analyst mentioned in another post.

On the institutional side, demand for spot ETFs has stalled. The funds logged zero net flow in each of their last four sessions. This month’s inflows total just $1 million through August 12, according to SoSoValue data.

The slowdown shows week over week, too. XRP ETFs drew about $1.01 million in the week ending August 7. That was down roughly 93% from $14.86 million the week before.

The next move depends on whether demand returns to XRP. A steady run of ETF inflows would indicate that institutions are buying again. A shift in Binance flows back to buyers would confirm it. Until then, on-chain conviction and price are pulling in opposite directions.