XRP slid to $1.08 on July 17, losing 2.5% on the day and hovering barely 7% above its 52-week low of $1.01 set in late June. Yet beneath the surface of a price languishing 24% below the 200-day moving average, a strikingly different narrative is unfolding in the wallets of large holders and on the balance sheets of institutional players.
Between July 11 and 15, wallets holding at least 1 million XRP accumulated roughly 70 million tokens, lifting their combined stash to 3.83 billion. That buying spree is part of a broader trend: exchange reserves have plummeted to a multi-year low, with the amount of XRP held on trading platforms shrinking from 3.76 billion to about 1.6 billion tokens over nine months. Analysts estimate that spot ETFs have absorbed 970 million XRP from circulation, while whale addresses now control approximately 74% of the total supply after adding 1.53 billion tokens in the past six months. Yet the price has refused to follow the supply squeeze — a disconnect that analysts attribute to weak spot demand and persistent outflows from XRP ETFs, which saw net withdrawals of $7.18 million in a single week after earlier meager inflows of $107,000.
Institutions, however, are building positions that suggest a longer time horizon. T. Rowe Price, the $1.89 trillion asset manager, launched its first actively managed multi-token crypto ETF (TKNZ) on the NYSE Arca on July 16. The vehicle initially holds $15 million in assets, with XRP representing 9.37% of the portfolio — the fourth-largest allocation behind Bitcoin (40.75%), Ethereum (18.42%) and BNB (11.01%). The fund charges 0.75% until May 2027 and then 0.90%, with custody handled by Anchorage Digital Bank. Historical data shows that passive crypto baskets attracted only $161 million in total versus $13.6 billion for single-asset products, so TKNZ will test whether active management can shift that dynamic.
Meanwhile, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) — which manages assets worth $114 trillion — conducted its first equity tokenization transactions on XRP-compatible infrastructure, with Citadel Securities executing the initial trades. Citadel had already invested $500 million in Ripple in October 2025. Ripple’s own stablecoin, RLUSD, now boasts a market cap exceeding $1.5 billion. The company has also joined the UK Treasury’s Wholesale Digital Markets Initiative, a program estimated to add £33 billion to annual GDP by 2035.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying XRP?
All these moves come against a tense political backdrop in Washington. The CLARITY Act, which would classify XRP as a commodity under CFTC jurisdiction and remove it from SEC oversight, faces a make-or-break moment before the summer recess. The House Committee hearing on July 17 — titled “Building the Future of Finance: How the CLARITY Act Unlocks Innovation” — is the last scheduled push. President Trump met with senators on July 16 to lobby for the bill after signing off on its final text. The House approved an earlier version in July 2025 by a 294–134 vote, and the Senate Banking Committee advanced it in May 2026 with a 15–9 margin.
Yet the Senate floor remains the hard obstacle. Republicans control 52 seats and need seven Democratic votes to reach the 60-vote threshold. Senator Elizabeth Warren is demanding an updated disclosure of Trump’s crypto-related earnings by July 23, citing the $1.4 billion in revenue reported for 2025 — more than double the prior year — and arguing the bill could deepen existing conflicts of interest. Senator Ruben Gallego has echoed that no Democratic votes will materialize without stricter ethics rules. The market’s confidence in a 2026 passage has eroded sharply: one Polymarket poll reflects a 31% probability, down from 82% in February, while another shows 41%, and Kalshi pegs it at 36%. Still, the odds of a Senate floor vote at all stand at 79%, and Senator Cynthia Lummis expects a vote as early as the coming week.
Ripple’s chief legal officer, Stuart Alderoty, has criticized holdout senators, warning that without the act, crypto holders remain exposed to fraud. Standard Chartered analysts project a $2.80 price target for XRP should the bill pass, but warn of a drop below $1 in the opposite scenario. Bitrue Research offers a base-case range of $1.80–$2.00 by September, with an optimistic scenario reaching $2.25–$2.50 — both heavily contingent on legislative progress.
On-chain and technical signals send mixed messages. The XRP Ledger crossed 8 million activated accounts on July 17, with roughly 25,350 daily active addresses — a figure that now includes AI agents autonomously opening accounts via the x402 standard. Ripple is advancing “confidential transfers” that would encrypt transaction amounts using zero-knowledge proofs, and an AI-driven red team has already identified over ten bugs. At the same time, the price remains below both its 50-day ($1.14) and 200-day ($1.44) moving averages, though a TD Sequential buy signal flashed at $1.109 on July 16, suggesting selling exhaustion. July has historically been a strong month for XRP, but this year the token is testing whether fundamental accumulation and regulatory hope can outweigh the gravitational pull of Washington’s calendar.
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