XRP Whales Accumulate as ETF Outflows and Regulatory Stalls Test Token’s Resilience

XRP is navigating one of its most contradictory periods in recent memory. The token trades at $1.08, barely above its 52-week low of $1.01 set on June 26, and sits more than 70% below the record high of $3.65 reached in July 2025. Yet beneath the surface, large holders are quietly accumulating while retail sentiment and institutional flows point in the opposite direction.

The price has lost 42.6% since the start of the year and 60.7% over the past twelve months. Technically, the picture remains bleak: XRP trades 7% under its 50-day moving average and 26% below the 200-day line. The relative strength index of 41.8 signals neither oversold conditions nor any real momentum. A brief short squeeze from $1 to $1.13 in recent weeks pushed funding rates slightly positive and tested resistance near $1.20, but fading spot volumes undercut any lasting breakout. The token has since slipped back to defend the $1.10 threshold.

The real headwind comes from Washington. The CLARITY Act, which would classify digital assets like XRP as commodities, missed a White House-imposed deadline of July 4. The Senate returned from its summer recess on July 13, raising hopes for a floor vote during the week of July 20. A hearing by the House Financial Services Committee is also scheduled for July 17. But prediction markets put the probability of passage this year at just 39%, and that regulatory fog is weighing heavily on sentiment. Weighted sentiment data from Santiment touched its weakest reading since October 2025, with the ratio of positive to negative comments among retail traders slipping to roughly 1.02 to 1.00 — the third-lowest level in two years.

Institutional investors are also pulling back. US spot XRP ETFs, which have collected a cumulative $1.48 billion since launch, recorded a net outflow of $7.18 million during the trading week of July 6-10, snapping a nine-week streak of inflows. The Bitwise XRP ETF alone saw $7.29 million exit on July 8, the largest single-day outflow since March. That follows Goldman Sachs’ decision to liquidate its entire XRP ETF position in the first quarter of 2026, a stake once worth roughly $154 million. The pool of seven US-listed XRP spot ETFs now manages around $1 billion in assets and holds 964.5 million XRP tokens.

Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying XRP?

On the blockchain, network activity is contracting. Active addresses on the XRP Ledger fell to 25,350 on July 11, the second-lowest daily count of the year, and have since dropped further to roughly 22,888. New wallet creation hit just 2,130, the lowest since November 2024. Yet at the same time, roughly 123 million XRP moved from exchanges to private wallets over the past week — a pattern often read as accumulation. Wallets holding between 10 million and 100 million XRP have been steadily building their positions since the start of 2026, suggesting that sophisticated players are treating the current levels as a buying opportunity.

Ripple itself is making strides beyond the price chart. On July 6, the company received full MiCA authorization from Luxembourg’s CSSF regulator, opening the door to regulated payment services across all 30 countries in the European Economic Area. A separate partnership with Mastercard, announced earlier in 2026, builds on a pilot launched November 5, 2025, in which Mastercard, WebBank, and Gemini use Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin on the XRP Ledger to settle credit card transactions. Closer to home, Ripple inked a sponsorship deal with the University of Kansas — CEO Brad Garlinghouse’s alma mater — placing the XRP logo on the jerseys of the Kansas Jayhawks, the first time a crypto brand has appeared on a major US college sports uniform.

The 24-hour trading volume stands at $698 million, with the token carving out a range between $1.00 and $1.13. The market capitalization is about $68.4 billion. All eyes are on the $1.10 to $1.20 zone, where the outcome of the CLARITY Act vote — and whether whale accumulation can offset fading retail and institutional demand — will determine XRP’s next direction.