Whales Gobble Up XRP at Two-Year Low as Network Upgrade and Regulatory Vote Loom

XRP token drops 68% from July high to $1.17, yet whale holdings hit 8-year record; network rebrands as xrpld; Washington regulatory decision could determine fate.

The XRP token has hit a two-year low of $1.07, trading at $1.17 at last check — a staggering 68% below the July 2025 high of $3.65. Yet beneath the surface of this brutal sell-off, a paradox is unfolding: whale accumulation is at an eight-year peak, developers are rebranding the network’s core software, and Washington is teetering on a regulatory decision that could send the coin soaring or sinking.

Technical Breakdown and Institutional Flight

The selling pressure has been relentless. The monthly Relative Strength Index (RSI) has fallen to a record 41, deeper than the crash lows of spring 2020. On a short-term basis, the RSI has plunged to 23, signaling severely oversold conditions. Market technicians are watching the psychologically key $1.00 support level; a break below that could trigger a rapid drop to $0.84, with some analysts even flagging a worst-case correction to $0.50.

Institutions have been leading the exodus. Goldman Sachs reportedly liquidated its entire XRP ETF position worth nearly $154 million in May, and the trend continued into early June. The 21Shares and Grayscale XRP funds recorded significant outflows, with millions of dollars pulled daily at the start of the month. The CME Group has launched 24-hour XRP futures trading — a sign of growing mainstream infrastructure — yet so far it has done little to stem the tide.

Whales and Exchange Outflows Tell Another Story

While retail and institutional sentiment sours, large holders are moving in the opposite direction. Wallets controlling at least 1 million XRP — known as whales — now hold 68.5% of the total supply, the highest concentration in eight years. In the first week of June alone, investors shifted $321 million worth of XRP off exchanges into private wallets. South Korea’s Upbit lost $135 million in reserves during that period, reducing the available circulating supply.

This divergence between price and accumulation suggests that sophisticated players view the current levels as a buying opportunity. Indeed, on Friday, roughly 50 million XRP were moved or sold from major addresses within 24 hours, and trading volume jumped 22% to $3.66 billion — a sign of active repositioning.

Ledger Overhaul Targets Tokenization

Amid the market turmoil, Ripple’s technical team is pressing ahead with a major upgrade. On June 5, engineers confirmed that version 3.2.0 of the core server software will rebrand the longtime "rippled" to "xrpld" — a change that improves security and reduces storage requirements. Validators and node operators must upgrade to stay on the network.

More ambitiously, CTO David Schwartz has outlined a roadmap to transform the XRP Ledger from a payments rail into an institutional tokenization platform. Planned integrations include tokenized repos, money-market funds, corporate loans, and listed equities directly on the ledger. The network already hosts around $3.5 billion in tokenized real-world assets in 2026. Meanwhile, the RLUSD stablecoin has been connected to Ethereum’s DeFi ecosystem via the Wormhole NTT framework, enabling cross-chain asset moves without wrapped tokens.

CLARITY Act: The Binary Catalyst

For all the technical progress, the most powerful lever for XRP’s price remains political. The US Senate is debating the CLARITY Act, a bill that would classify XRP as a digital commodity and place oversight under the CFTC. Galaxy Research puts the odds of passage at 75%.

Standard Chartered has laid out two stark scenarios: if the bill passes, XRP could rally to $2.80–$8.00 in the medium term. If it fails, the token may slide to $0.53 — a 55% drop from current levels. The Senate vote, more than any code update or whale move, will determine whether XRP’s two-year low marks a bottom or just another stop on the way down.