Ripple transferred 50 million XRP worth approximately $50.5 million to an unknown wallet on August 13, 2026, with 1 million tokens subsequently moving to Binance. The receiving wallet had already accumulated 150 million XRP earlier in the month, raising questions about Ripple's intentions. Weekly net inflows into United States spot XRP ETFs collapsed 93% from $14.86 million to just $1.01 million for the week ending August 8, marking the worst inflow figure of the year. Net assets across all XRP ETF products declined to $964 million, representing a significant deterioration from previous weeks. The total net assets have declined from $993.38 million on August 5 to $950.05 million on August 10, according to Sosovalue data, with year-to-date inflows now standing at $159 million, representing approximately 7% of assets under management.
XRP Ledger transactions have fallen dramatically by 44% from 2.81 million on August 5 to 1.57 million on August 9, as reported by CoinGlass data. This decline in network activity suggests weaker demand and reduced network participation in recent days. The derivatives market has added significant pressure, with $8.45 million worth of XRP positions liquidated over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGlass data. Long positions accounted for $8.25 million (97.55%) of the liquidations, while short positions totaled just $207,044, forcing closures that increased selling pressure and created more pressure on other leveraged traders. Despite the decline, XRP whales appear to be using the lower price levels to increase their holdings, adding around 380 million XRP in one week and taking their total holdings to roughly 8.1 billion tokens, or about 13% of the total supply.
The weekly inflow collapse has driven XRP price down 3.44% to around $1 over the past 24 hours, extending its weekly loss to 6.4%, as reported by CoinGlass data. XRP is trading near its yearly lows, reflecting the broader weakness in ETF momentum and reduced institutional demand as institutional investors increasingly dominate crypto markets. XRP is trading between $0.99 and $1.03 on August 14, 2026, hovering near the psychologically significant $1.00 level, with the token approximately 71% below its cycle high of $3.65 set on July 17, 2025. $1 remains the key support level, with the token potentially entering a consolidation phase if it holds above this level. However, a break below $1 could open the way toward $0.94, according to technical analysis. The price decline comes as U.S. inflation data approaches on August 12, with investors reducing risk ahead of the key data that could affect expectations for U.S. interest rates and broader crypto demand.
Institutional investors now drive 72% of Wintermute's OTC spot volume in the first half of 2026, compared with 59% in the same period of 2025, according to Wintermute data. Hedge funds, asset managers, private wealth companies and corporate treasuries have increasingly filled up the market as some retail participants moved back toward equities in the prolonged downturn. ETF demand has surged with U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs seeing $853.5 million in inflows within five days, led by BlackRock's IBIT collecting $693.7 million and Fidelity's FBTC collecting $116.4 million. Diversification and client demand were cited by 63% of managers as the most important reasons for holding digital assets, compared with 36% two years earlier, while the median allocation was 1% according to CoinShares survey of 26 fund managers with $1.3 trillion of assets. Since August 2026, seven U.S. spot XRP ETF have collectively locked up approximately 992.5 million XRP and attracted over $1.5 billion in inflows, though this represents only about 0.99% of the total 100 billion XRP supply.
The CLARITY Act missed its pre-recess window in the Senate, pushing any legislative clarity on XRP's commodity status to September at the earliest. The bill, which would codify XRP's digital commodity classification into federal statute and hand oversight to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, cannot receive a vote until lawmakers return on September 14. Polymarket's prediction contract for the CLARITY Act to be signed into law by the end of 2026 fell to approximately 14%, reflecting growing skepticism about regulatory progress. Whale wallets are absorbing more than 10 million XRP per day, with large holder outflows from Binance accounting for 91% of total exchange outflows, the highest concentration since 2024. Mid-tier whales holding between 10 million and 100 million XRP have added roughly 1.23 billion tokens year-to-date, lifting the cohort from about 10.97 billion to 12.2 billion tokens. Binance XRP futures open interest reached a 30-day high of 435.1 million tokens on August 12, with the 30-day Z-Score climbing to approximately 1.20, while total open interest across all exchanges reached 2.67 billion XRP.
