Why are whales suddenly withdrawing XRP? What's happening ahead of Ripple's 1 billion release?

▲ XRP/AI Generated Image ©

As XRP (Ripple) whales withdraw large quantities from Binance, market tension is rising with the impending unlock of 1 billion XRP by Ripple. In particular, Binance's liquidity has fallen to its lowest level since 2020, drawing attention to the potential for increased price volatility in the future.

According to cryptocurrency media Watcher.Guru on May 26 (local time), 122 million XRP were withdrawn from Binance on May 22 alone. All transactions were reported to be over 1 million XRP, effectively interpreted as movements by whale investors. This marks the largest single-day withdrawal since 278 million XRP recorded on February 9 this year.

CryptoQuant analyst Amr Taha analyzed that the proportion of wallets with over 1 million XRP in Binance's daily withdrawal volume surged to 57.6% at the time. This is the highest since March 28. Notably, while the XRP price was approximately $1.43 during the large withdrawal in February, this current withdrawal occurred at around $1.35. This implies that large investors are continuously moving assets out of exchanges even in a lower price environment.

Deteriorating market liquidity is also observed simultaneously. According to CryptoQuant analyst Arab Chain, Binance's 30-day XRP liquidity index has dropped to approximately 0.043, marking its lowest level since January 2020. This index had maintained a level of 3-4 during 2022-2024. The analyst diagnosed, “The current XRP market has entered a period of slowing trading activity, and greater price volatility may occur if liquidity and trading volume recover in the future.”

In this situation, Ripple is set to unlock approximately 1 billion XRP on June 1. Based on current market prices, this amounts to about $1.36 billion. However, the media explained that Ripple has historically re-escrowed 600-800 million XRP out of the monthly unlocked supply. Accordingly, the actual amount of additional XRP circulated in the market is expected to be around 200-400 million XRP, or approximately $272 million to $544 million by value. The current XRP circulating supply is approximately 61.85 billion.

Institutional fund flows, on the other hand, show an improving trend. XRP recorded a net inflow of $119.6 million last week, marking its strongest weekly performance since December 2025. The cumulative inflow since the beginning of the year has increased to $159 million. Simultaneously, Binance's XRP holdings also decreased to approximately 2.7 billion as of May 24, reaching a three-month low. The market is focusing on the scale of Ripple's re-lockup and whether demand will recover after the unlock as key variables determining XRP's direction.

*Disclaimer: This article is for investment reference only, and we are not responsible for any investment losses based on it. The content should be interpreted for informational purposes only.*