XRP Has 5.66 Million Small Wallets at a Record High While Large Holders Are Quietly Declining

What the Three Tiers Show

Recent Santiment data chart, that covers March 2025 through March 2026, tracks wallet counts across three size categories against the XRP price line. The directional trends across the three tiers are moving in different directions simultaneously, which is where the analytical interest lies.

The small wallet category, under 100 XRP, is annotated as reaching a record 5.66 million addresses. The yellow line representing this tier trends consistently upward across the entire chart period, accelerating toward the right edge. The growth is not correlated with price. XRP declined significantly from its early 2025 highs toward the $1.40 to $1.50 range currently, while the small wallet count continued rising throughout. New addresses are being created and funded at the retail level regardless of price direction.

The mid-tier category, 100 to 100,000 XRP, sits at 2.01 million wallets represented by the blue line. This tier has been broadly stable with a slight upward trend across the period, reflecting steady participation from the intermediate holder base without the sharp growth visible in the smallest tier.

The large wallet category, more than 100,000 XRP, tells the opposite story. The orange line representing these 32,054 addresses has declined across the right portion of the chart, trending lower as price also moved lower from late 2025 onward. The divergence between this declining orange line and the rising yellow small wallet line is the most analytically significant visual on the chart.

What the Divergence Means

Rising small wallet counts during a price decline reflect two possible dynamics. New retail participants are entering the network at lower prices, treating the decline as an opportunity to accumulate small positions. Alternatively, existing holders are distributing from large wallets into multiple smaller addresses, which would show up as small wallet growth without representing genuine new network adoption. The data alone cannot distinguish between the two.

The declining large wallet count is more straightforward to interpret. Addresses holding more than 100,000 XRP, worth approximately $144,000 at current prices, have been reducing in number. That reduction reflects either large holders selling down their positions below the threshold, consolidating into even larger single addresses, or moving XRP off-chain to exchange custody where it would not appear in on-chain wallet counts.

The combination of record retail wallet growth and declining large holder counts is consistent with what distribution looks like at the on-chain level. Large holders reduce positions. Some of that supply flows to retail buyers who accumulate smaller amounts. The network grows in address count while concentration at the top tier decreases.

The Network Growth Context

The record 5.66 million small wallet figure is a genuine network growth metric regardless of the distribution interpretation. More unique addresses holding any amount of XRP represents broader adoption of the XRP Ledger as a venue for holding and transacting the asset. At 7.69 million total wallets across all three tiers, the XRP Ledger’s active address base is growing even as price remains under pressure.

As covered across multiple articles this week, XRP faces a technically important decision at the $1.44 to $1.55 range, with the $1.55 level representing the breakout trigger that analysts identify as necessary for a meaningful recovery. The SEC XRP ETF application deadline on March 27 adds a near-term regulatory catalyst that the wallet distribution data does not capture. Network growth at the retail level and declining large holder counts are on-chain conditions. What happens to price in the near term depends on factors sitting above the chain rather than within it.

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