The XRP price is trading at $1.13, down a modest -0.5% over 24 hours, but the flat candles are hiding something more interesting beneath the surface. On-chain data shows a clean split between who is buying and who is bailing, and the buyers are not small accounts. That divergence may matter more than the price itself right now.
According to Santiment, wallets holding between 100,000 and 100 million XRP, the so-called whales and sharks, added 2.8% more coins over the past five weeks, a period during which XRP climbed from roughly $1.00 to $1.16. Simultaneously, the smallest wallets shed 5.2% of their holdings.
XRP whales load up while retail heads for the door
Wallets holding 100K to 100M $XRP have grown their stacks by 2.8% over the past five weeks, per Santiment, while the smallest retail wallets shed 5.2% in the same window. The token has historically tracked its biggest holders… pic.twitter.com/jjomtWjaYN
— BSCN (@BSCNews) July 22, 2026
Santiment flagged the split directly on X: “Historically, XRP price has tended to move more with key stakeholders and against the smallest retail wallets, so this split supports the bullish case behind the bounce.” That is not a subtle signal. Large holders accumulating into retail weakness is a textbook capitulation setup, and the on-chain record here is unambiguous.
Zoom out and the one-month gain sits at 8.67%, with a one-year return of 278.59%, so today’s tight consolidation is happening after a substantial run. The next move likely depends on which side of the current range breaks first.
Can XRP Price Push Above $1.16 and Sustain a Breakout?
The XRP/BTC chart is approaching a major moment.
The red descending channel is close to breaking.
When that breakout happens, I expect Ripple to outperform Bitcoin by 10x from here.
By the time $BTC is printing new ATH, $XRP will likely already be trading above $12
Save… pic.twitter.com/a8RRlu6kkt
— Celal Kucuker (@CelalKucuker) July 23, 2026
With the XRP price sitting near $1.13, showing a tight day range of $1.1292–$1.1493, about two cents of breathing room in either direction. That compression alone tells the story: the market is waiting, not deciding.
Support is holding in the $1.12–$1.13 zone, tested repeatedly on intraday dips without a decisive breach. Resistance clusters at $1.15–$1.16, the upper bound of the recent range and also the level at which whale accumulation was most visible during the five-week recovery window.
XRP remains approximately 68.9% below its all-time high of $3.65, which means the structural upside room is large, but that ceiling is irrelevant until near-term range resistance clears.
Three scenarios are worth tracking:
Bull case: a clean close above $1.16 on volume confirms the whale accumulation thesis and opens the path toward the $1.30–$1.40 area, a zone technical analysis has flagged as the next meaningful target.
Base case: XRP grinds sideways between $1.12 and $1.16 for another week or two as the market digests the prior run, which is frustrating but not structurally broken.
Bear case: a sustained close below $1.12 flips the recent support to resistance and puts the $1.00 level back in play, the exact price at which retail was already selling, not buying.
Upcoming catalysts include any regulatory clarity on a potential XRP ETF and fresh adoption data from the XRP Ledger’s payments and tokenization infrastructure. No specific dated triggers are confirmed in the next 48 hours.
Bitcoin Hyper Targets Early-Mover Upside as XRP Tests Key Levels
XRP’s whale-versus-retail divergence illustrates a recurring pattern in crypto: sophisticated capital moves early, then price follows. For holders watching the XRP price consolidate near familiar levels with a $71Bn market cap already priced in, the asymmetry is smaller than it once was.
The question is whether the risk-reward still justifies fresh allocation at this stage of the cycle, or whether earlier-stage infrastructure plays offer a more compelling entry point.
Bitcoin Hyper is one project drawing attention in that context. It positions itself as the first Bitcoin Layer 2 to integrate the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM), the smart contract execution environment behind Solana’s speed, directly onto Bitcoin’s security layer.
The proposition: sub-second smart contract execution with Bitcoin’s trust model underneath. The presale has raised $32,977,147.17 at a current token price of $0.0136835, with staking available for early participants.
Two standout features are the decentralized canonical bridge for native BTC transfers and the claim of faster transaction throughput than Solana itself.
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