XRP Whales Boost Holdings While Retail Investors Trim Positions

On-chain data shows that wallets holding between 100,000 and 100 million XRP increased their balances by about 2.8% over the past five weeks, while smaller wallets reduced theirs by roughly 5.2%. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index rose to 33, moving out of the extreme‑fear zone, indicating improving market sentiment.

Institutional interest is cited as a driver of optimism: new XRP exchange‑traded products have launched, the Ripple Ledger is seeing growing use for payments and tokenisation, and Franklin Templeton clients purchased about $5.66 million of XRP. Ripple’s long‑running legal dispute with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has concluded, providing additional regulatory clarity.

Separately, rumours that Ripple could burn the roughly 32 billion XRP held in escrow have been refuted. Experts note that the XRP Ledger requires roughly 80% consensus among its 35 trusted validators to amend protocol rules, and Ripple controls only three of those validators, making a unilateral burn impossible.