XRP Ledger’s Central Bank Win Fails to Lift Token as Whales Retreat and Price Languishes

RBA's Project Acacia tests tokenized bonds on XRP Ledger, but XRP token drops 27% YTD as whale activity and price momentum fade.

The Reserve Bank of Australia has put the XRP Ledger through its paces with a live pilot for tokenized government bonds, yet the XRP token itself continues to slide. The paradox is sharp: the network’s infrastructure is winning institutional validation, but the asset’s price keeps sinking under the weight of disengaged whales and a 27% year-to-date decline.

Project Acacia, conducted between August 2025 and February 2026, saw banks, fintechs, custodians and exchanges test the entire lifecycle of an Australian government bond as a digital twin on a public-permissioned version of the XRP Ledger. The pilot, led by Zerocap, covered issuance, secondary trading, redemption, order books and automated market-making—all settled in RLUSD, Ripple’s U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin. Ripple, Chainlink, Fireblocks and JPMorgan collaborated on the tech stack, signalling that established financial players are taking the infrastructure seriously.

Twenty use cases and 12 pilots with real money and real assets were completed. Beyond sovereign bonds, the tests included corporate bonds, private credit, securitized receivables, repos, carbon credits and mining licences. The central bank said the technology offered faster settlement and lower operational risk.

Yet for all that activity, not a single step in the process required buying or holding XRP in any meaningful quantity. Stablecoins denominated in USD, EUR and AUD now run on the ledger; Deutsche Bank and Aviva are among the names involved. The token itself remains a bystander while billions of tokenized assets are processed on its home network.

That disconnect is reflected in the price. XRP changed hands at $1.37 recently, a drop of roughly 27% since the start of 2025 and more than 42% over the past 12 months. The 50-day moving average sits near $1.40, a level the token has struggled to reclaim.

Under the surface, whale behaviour tells a similar story. On 24 May, XRP holdings on centralized exchanges fell by more than 35 million tokens in a single day—a 1.29% decline to 2.709 billion. While exchange outflows are typically interpreted as a sign of accumulation and long-term holding intent, the timing is striking: the price had already lost 14% in the prior ten days.

Large-scale whale activity has also dried up. Transactions worth over $1 million plummeted from 157 to 67 over nine days, a 57% drop. Analyst Ali Martinez described the pattern as a “compression phase” — declining volatility, no clear directional impulse, and a market waiting for a catalyst.

Technicals offer little clarity. XRP is trading below its key moving averages, with support between $1.26 and $1.31 and resistance from $1.38 to $1.40. Whether that support zone holds will likely determine the next major move.

Despite the price pressure, the XRP Ledger is expanding at the user level. On 20 May, 4,300 new wallets were created in a single day—the fourth highest daily figure this year. Analysts view such wallet growth as an early signal of rising adoption.

The development side is also active. The team is working on version 3.2.0 of the XRPL software, following version 3.1.3 which brought fixes for NFTs, Permissioned Domains and the Lending Protocol. Meanwhile, the network is preparing for quantum-resistant cryptography in collaboration with Project Eleven.

Retail investors appear to be building positions while large holders sit on their hands. Meanwhile, several institutional catalysts are lining up. The Clarity Act, which aims to regulate cryptoassets in Australia, has passed the Senate committee and a full floor vote is expected in June. XRP ETFs already manage approximately $1.3 billion, and JPMorgan forecasts inflows of $4 billion to $8 billion in their first year. In Japan, 44 million Rakuten users have been able to transact XRP via the payment app since April, and a banking integration covering 17 million customers is scheduled for the third quarter.

These developments underscore the network’s momentum, but they do not change the fundamental question Project Acacia has raised: Can XRP as an asset ever capture value from the infrastructure it enables? For now, the price is offering its own answer.