XRP’s recent price struggles is starting to look less like routine underperformance and more like capitulation as long-term holders who bought above $2 over the past year are now realizing millions in losses.
Data from Glassnode shows that this cohort has been realizing losses at roughly $20 million to $110 million a day amid the digital asset's 55% decline over the past six months to roughly $1.30.
This shift suggests that XRP's current selling pressure is driven by investors cutting risk on weakness rather than taking profits on strength.
As a result, the market is crowded with late buyers under pressure, even as earlier entrants from the sub-$1 accumulation phase still have room to trim positions.
Why this matters
XRP is under pressure from the least supportive kind of selling. Recent buyers are being forced out by losses, while earlier holders still have enough profit to sell into strength. That leaves the token vulnerable to short-lived rebounds unless demand improves enough to absorb both groups.
That has left XRP in its longest losing streak since 2014 and given the market a top-heavy structure, where any price rebounds struggle to hold.
Selling pressure is coming from the wrong part of the market
What makes the latest stretch more significant than an ordinary drawdown is the source of the selling.
In earlier cycles, XRP holders typically sold into strength as prices rose and profits became harder to ignore. This time, the selling is arriving as the market weakens.
Market observers have characterized the shift as “distribution into weakness,” a pattern that points to fading confidence in the token’s near-term direction.
That helps explain why the decline has become harder to arrest. Recent buyers are now sitting on losses, while earlier holders remain in profit and can still reduce exposure in rallies.
A market in that condition tends to struggle on the way up because every bounce gives one group a chance to cut losses and another an opportunity to realize gains. The result is a more fragile setup than the headline price decline alone would suggest.
Santiment data reinforce that picture. According to the blockchain analytics firm, wallets active on the XRP Ledger over the past year have averaged a 41% decline in their positions, the weakest mean-to-realized value reading for XRP since the FTX collapse in November 2022.
This effectively shows how deeply the selloff has affected recent positioning and why the market has struggled to build a durable recovery.
Meanwhile, the broader crypto market backdrop has not helped the situation. The XRP downturn has unfolded during a wider risk-off period across digital assets, with Bitcoin retreating from above $126,000 to around $66,000.
In that environment, traders have shown less willingness to chase assets without a clear near-term trigger, especially when holder behavior is already deteriorating.
Spot buyers are still present, but futures traders are not buying the turn
Meanwhile, the XRP market is not uniformly bearish.
CryptoQuant data show spot cumulative volume delta on Binance has climbed to about $520.2 million, indicating that buyers are still stepping into the market.
At the same time, the perpetual cumulative volume delta remains negative by about $261 million, indicating that leveraged traders have not meaningfully shifted their stance.
This shows that XRP is still attracting cash-market demand, but the derivatives market is not yet confirming that interest with the sort of aggressive repositioning that often accompanies a stronger move.
That split helps explain why XRP can appear supported yet remain weak. Spot demand can cushion price and reduce the pace of the decline, but if futures traders continue to lean defensively, rallies tend to lack follow-through.
While the market can stabilize in that state, it often needs a fresh catalyst to break into a more decisive trend.
Whale behavior points in a similar direction. CryptoQuant stated that daily whale inflows into Binance have dropped to about 12.6 million XRP, while the 30-day cumulative flow has fallen to around 1.44 billion XRP, down from roughly 2.6 billion XRP in March.
Large holders are therefore sending less supply to exchanges, which reduces one source of near-term selling pressure.
However, the lower inflows do not automatically create demand. They simply leave XRP in a market with less aggressive supply and still insufficient conviction.
That is why XRP still looks like an asset in suspension. The pressure from large holders has eased. Real buyers remain active in spot markets.
Yet the token remains pinned by defensive leverage and by a broader market that has not fully turned back toward risk.
Ripple keeps building, but the token is still being priced like a stressed asset
The market’s hesitation stands out because Ripple’s broader operating backdrop has improved.
The Brad Garlinghouse-led company’s multiyear fight with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ended in a settlement after a series of favorable rulings, an outcome that helped drive renewed accumulation and gave XRP its strongest run in years.
At the same time, Ripple has also pursued numerous acquisitions and licenses to expand its product reach and global footprint.
Supporters of XRP argue that those developments should eventually matter more for price.
Asheesh Birla, chief executive officer of XRP treasury firm Evernorth, said institutional momentum around XRP is building at a pace not seen 18 months ago and described the financial stack around the asset as still being built.
He pointed to regulatory progress and growing real-world blockchain activity as evidence that the structural backdrop is improving.
The market, though, is not yet rewarding XRP as if that re-rating has arrived. Data from SoSoValue show that XRP exchange-traded funds recorded their first monthly net outflow of more than $31 million in March.
This breaks a stretch that had fueled a $1.2 billion inflow streak, making them one of the strongest early crypto product launches outside Bitcoin.
That outflow does not negate Ripple’s longer-term progress, but it does show that investors remain cautious about assigning a near-term premium to the token.
That leaves XRP caught between two realities. Ripple’s legal clarity, capital raising, and institutional push offer a more constructive longer-term backdrop.
In the near term, however, XRP is still trading like a crowded and damaged position, weighed down by holders selling into weakness, a large cohort of underwater buyers, and a derivatives market that has yet to confirm a turn.
The post XRP losses are forcing late buyers out, turning every bounce into a new sell zone appeared first on CryptoSlate.
