Whale Accumulation and Network Overhaul: XRP’s Dual Narrative as Ripple Targets Africa

XRP rises 13% but whales control 74% of supply; network rebrands to xrpld; Ripple invests in Flutterwave for RLUSD; $1.75B ETF inflows continue.

XRP jumped 13% in a single session after the US-Iran conflict de-escalation, briefly touching $1.28. But the short-term rally masks a deeper structural shift: whales are hoarding tokens at a record pace while Ripple pushes into African payments and the network undergoes a quiet identity change.

On-chain data from Santiment shows wallets holding at least one million XRP now control 74.1% of the circulating supply — roughly 45.98 billion tokens. Over the past six months, these large addresses have added another 1.53 billion XRP to their holdings. The pattern is textbook: institutional players accumulate as retail investors sell into weakness.

Despite the session bounce, XRP remains under pressure. The token faced resistance at $1.30 and has since slipped to around $1.21 — roughly 8% below its 50-day moving average of $1.32. The year-to-date loss still stands at about 36%. The 200-day moving average sits at $1.57, a level that needs to be reclaimed to neutralize the longer-term downtrend.

Network Gets a New Identity and a Performance Boost

The XRP Ledger rolled out version 3.2.0 on June 15, bringing a change that goes beyond technical tweaks. The core server software, long known as “rippled,” has been renamed to “xrpld” (XRP Ledger Daemon). The community sees this as a deliberate decoupling from Ripple Inc., potentially boosting regulatory clarity.

The upgrade delivers tangible performance gains: RAM usage is expected to drop by 30–40%. A new amendment called fixCleanup3_2_0 patches security vulnerabilities in single-asset vaults, decentralized exchanges, and lending protocols. Validators and node operators must migrate to the new version.

Ripple Plants RLUSD in African Fintech Giant

Ripple is taking its stablecoin strategy to the continent’s largest payment platform. The company invested in the Series E round of Flutterwave, a fintech now valued at $3.2 billion that has processed over one billion transactions. The goal: integrate Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin and the XRP Ledger into Flutterwave’s infrastructure, which covers 35 African countries.

RLUSD already commands a market capitalization of roughly $1.63 billion, with 82% of the supply sitting on Ethereum and the remainder on the XRP Ledger. BNY Mellon acts as custodian for the reserves. Separately, tokenized real-world assets on the XRP Ledger have reached a combined value of $3.7 billion across 293 projects, including energy-backed commodities and tokenized US Treasuries.

Institutional Inflows and Regulatory Tailwinds

American XRP spot ETFs have drawn over $1.75 billion in net inflows since their debut in November 2025. The pace remains steady: in the week to June 12 alone, fresh capital totaled $10.68 million — marking six consecutive weeks of positive flows.

Political winds are shifting in Washington. The Senate Banking Committee has passed the CLARITY Act, which classifies digital assets like XRP as commodities. The bill now heads to the full Senate. If enacted, it could ease the regulatory overhang that has weighed on the token for years.

For now, XRP’s fate hinges on holding support near $1.19–$1.20. A break below that level could invite further selling. But the combination of whale accumulation, a leaner network, and expanding real-world use cases suggests that the bearish headlines may be missing a larger story unfolding beneath the surface.