81% of XRP wallets hold only a small amount of tokens; retail investors dominate but struggle to influence price movements

On-chain data shows that the total number of XRP wallets has increased to approximately 7.573 million, with over 500,000 new addresses added since Q4 2025. Despite the XRP price dropping about 44% during the same period, hovering below $1.60, user growth has not slowed, indicating that market participation is still expanding.

What’s more noteworthy is the distribution of holdings. About 6.18 million wallets, accounting for 81% of all addresses, hold less than 500 XRP each, with over 3.6 million addresses having less than 20 XRP. This distribution highlights that the XRP ecosystem is predominantly retail-driven, with related searches such as “XRP wallet distribution” and “XRP retail holder ratio” continuing to rise.

However, the numerical advantage has not translated into control over supply. The aforementioned 81% of wallets collectively hold only about 242 million XRP, which is just 0.24% of the total supply of approximately 99 billion tokens. In stark contrast, the top 2004 wallets (about 0.03%) control around 48.7 billion tokens, nearly half of the total supply. This structure has made “XRP whale concentration” and “XRP centralization risk” hot topics in the market.

Looking back, in early Q4 2025 when XRP was priced around $2.80, the number of wallets was about 7.05 million; even as the price fell to around $1.57, the number of addresses continued to grow, indicating that many small investors were attempting to position themselves at lower prices. Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz has also repeatedly mentioned the broad base of the XRP community, considering it a symbol of long-term potential.

But the highly concentrated supply structure remains a double-edged sword. On one hand, if large holders sell off en masse, it could trigger sharp volatility; on the other hand, institutional-grade funds tend to be more patient and may provide some stability when the market is under pressure.

From the perspective of wallet expansion and holding distribution, XRP is currently in a delicate stage of “retail enthusiasm and supply concentration.” Whether the price can break through in the future may depend on the rebalancing of capital structure and market confidence.