• XRP exchange reserves dropped from 3.76 billion to roughly 1.66 billion since October 2025, a 57% decline driven by ETF custody, whale cold storage moves, and Korean exchange withdrawals.

• Despite the outflows, the XRP price has fallen 64% over the same period because overhead selling from underwater holders and macro pressure has overpowered the supply tightening.

• In 2024, similar reserve lows on Binance didn’t trigger a rally, but the breakout came months later after demand arrived, suggesting the current outflows are setting the stage but not yet triggering a move.

• A recent study identified one single habit that doubled Americans’ retirement savings and moved retirement from dream, to reality. Read more here.

The XRP price has fallen 64% since July 2025, from $3.65 to $1.33, and during the same stretch, exchange reserves have dropped 57% as over 2 billion tokens left centralized exchanges. When that much supply leaves exchanges, prices usually go up because there are fewer tokens available to sell. But XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) has kept falling through it all.

Whales, ETF custodians, and Korean exchange users are all pulling XRP off exchanges at the same time, and the pace has been the fastest since the outflows that preceded XRP’s 560% rally in late 2024. With the exchange outflows accelerating, why isn’t the supply squeeze working to move the price the way it’s supposed to?

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At their peak in October 2025, centralized exchanges held roughly 3.76 billion XRP according to Glassnode data. By early 2026, that number had dropped to around 1.66 billion—more than 2 billion tokens pulled off exchanges in under five months. The decline picked up speed after the XRP ETF launched in November 2025, and by January the pace was unlike anything the market had seen since late 2024 when similar outflows preceded XRP’s run from $0.50 to $3.65.

The first five days of January alone saw roughly 800 million XRP leave exchanges, and on March 10 a single-day outflow of $738 million worth of XRP moved into cold storage—one of the largest withdrawal events of 2026. Retail traders don’t move such volume off exchanges for no reason. Cold storage transfers of that size typically come from institutions or large holders repositioning for the long term.

What makes the current outflows stand out compared to 2024 is that they’re happening while the XRP price is falling. In mid-2024, exchange reserves hit similar lows on Binance around 2.6 billion XRP, but that was during a period where XRP was trading sideways at $0.50 and nobody was paying attention. Right now, reserves are even lower and the outflows are faster, but the XRP price has been dropping the entire time. This raises the obvious question of who exactly is accumulating this aggressively into a 64% drawdown?

XRP ETFs have been the biggest single driver of the outflows. Since launch, spot XRP ETFs have absorbed roughly 770 million tokens into custodial wallets backed by over $1.3 billion in cumulative inflows. When an ETF buys XRP, those tokens move off exchanges and into regulated custody at firms like Coinbase, where they sit until investors redeem their shares. That supply is effectively removed from the tradeable market for as long as the ETF holds it.

Large whale wallets have also been moving aggressively. In early March, wallets holding between 100 million and 1 billion XRP added roughly 1.3 billion tokens in a 48-hour window according to Santiment data. And the massive single-day cold storage move on March 10 came from this same group. Korean exchanges have also seen sharp withdrawals. Upbit lost around 40 million XRP and Bithumb around 20 million in the first week of January, echoing the same pattern that played out before XRP’s 560% rally in November 2024.

The picture isn’t entirely one-directional, though. Since January, approximately 3.8 billion XRP has flowed into Binance from whale wallets, with the pace picking up through February—including $652 million in a single week in late February. Despite those massive deposits, Binance’s overall XRP reserves have barely moved, which means the market has been absorbing the inflows almost as fast as they arrive.

So while the net direction is clearly toward outflows across the broader exchange ecosystem, the largest exchange in the world has been seeing heavy two-way traffic from whales who are both depositing and withdrawing.

On paper, a 57% drop in exchange reserves should be one of the strongest bullish signals in crypto. Fewer tokens on exchanges means thinner order books, less sell-side liquidity, and sharper price reactions when demand picks up. But the XRP price has dropped 64% over the same period that reserves contracted, which means the selling pressure from other sources. The bearish pressure is mostly from underwater holders breaking even, macro-driven risk-off flows, and whale profit-taking.

Binance reserves hit similar lows around 2.6 billion XRP in July 2024, and the price sat at roughly $0.50 for months afterward without any breakout. The rally that eventually took XRP from $0.50 to $3.65 didn’t start until November 2024, and by that point exchange reserves had actually climbed back above previous levels. The tightest supply didn’t trigger the rally—the rally came later when demand finally arrived, driven by the SEC settlement and ETF launches.

Right now, about 60% of XRP’s circulating supply is held at a cost basis above the current price, with the average sitting around $1.44. Every time XRP pushes toward that level, holders who have been waiting weeks or months to break even sell to get out. That overhead supply is doing more to suppress the XRP price than the exchange outflows are doing to support it.

The supply squeeze is building the conditions for a sharp move when the macro conditions do eventually turn, but until that happens, the thinning exchange supply on its own isn’t enough to push the XRP price higher.

The exchange outflows are happening at a pace that hasn’t been seen since the buildup to XRP’s last major rally in late 2024. But low exchange reserves alone have never been enough to drive XRP higher—the 2024 move proved that. The outflows are setting the stage by thinning the available supply, so when demand eventually arrives, the move will be sharper than it would be if exchanges were still sitting on 3.7 billion tokens.

For the supply squeeze to actually translate into a higher XRP price, the macro pressure has to ease first. Oil needs to come down, the Fed needs to shift its tone, and Bitcoin needs to break out of its range before altcoin capital starts flowing again. If those things happen while exchange reserves are this low, the recovery could be fast and explosive.

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