XRP holders are refusing to sell even as on-chain metrics show a market deep in capitulation. Exchange supply has fallen to multi-year lows, the realized profit-to-loss ratio sits at its weakest level since August 2022, and futures open interest has dropped roughly 75 percent from its peak. The price has barely moved.
XRP trades near $1.00, more than 30 percent below the average cost basis of the wallets holding it. Bitrue Research Institute has tracked the divergence through August and concludes that holders are not selling because they cannot, while the market remains stuck because the catalyst that could change the picture has not yet arrived.
Spot flow data from Coinglass shows net outflows across every measured window. Over the past 30 days, $1.85 billion left exchanges against $1.69 billion in inflows, for a net outflow of $163.58 million. The 90-day cumulative net outflow reached $568.57 million. Over 150 days, the total climbed to $763.39 million, equal to about 1.2 percent of XRP’s market capitalization removed from exchange wallets.
When tokens leave exchanges, they leave the pool of readily available sell-side supply. That compression has not been enough to lift price in the absence of fresh demand.
“Exchange outflow patterns of this duration and consistency have historically aligned with accumulation phases,” Bitrue Research Institute noted in its August analysis, “where long-term holders absorb supply while short-term traders remain on the sidelines.”
The cost-basis data paints a different picture of those holders. Glassnode places XRP’s aggregate realized price near $1.48 while the spot price sits around $1.02. Roughly 60 percent of circulating supply is held at a loss, with an average drawdown of more than 30 percent from cost basis. Most of the tokens leaving exchanges are not being sold for profit. They are being parked.
The 90-day realized profit-to-loss ratio stood at 0.38 on June 9 and fell to 0.33 by June 25, its lowest reading since August 2022. During the 2025 rally, the same ratio once reached 50.
Futures markets have already reduced exposure. Open interest peaked near $10 billion in July 2025 when XRP hit an all-time high of $3.65. By early August 2026, it had fallen to about $2.25 billion, a six-month low and a decline of roughly 75 percent from the peak. Three out of every four dollars of leveraged positions from the 2025 rally have been closed.
Bitrue Research Institute describes the combination of collapsing open interest, depressed profit-to-loss ratios, and persistent exchange outflows as a late-stage capitulation pattern. “The convergence of collapsing open interest, deeply depressed profit-to-loss ratios, and persistent exchange outflows is consistent with the late stage of a downtrend,” their August analysis states, “where sellers have largely exhausted themselves.”
Whether that exhaustion turns into a recovery depends on new demand. One potential catalyst, the CLARITY Act, has been delayed. The Senate is not expected to take a procedural cloture vote until around mid-September. Market-implied odds of the bill passing before the end of 2026 have fallen in recent weeks.
Until a clear catalyst appears, the on-chain data describe a market that has cleared much of its leverage and reduced available sell-side supply but has not yet attracted the demand needed to move price. The holders are not selling. The market has not yet rewarded them for it.
This release is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Cryptocurrency markets remain volatile.