Can XRP’s price recover as whale holdings surge to an 8-year high?

Whales have been extremely bullish on XRP, but the price isn’t moving as much.  According to on-chain data, wallets with at least 10 million XRP now collectively hold 45.8 billion tokens - Worth over $68.5 billion. According to Santiment, this is the most this whale cohort has held since May 2018.  In other words, the press time whale demand, 68.5% of the overall XRP supply, translated to a record high in the last eight years.  However, a closer look at the aforementioned whale movements also coincided with Spot XRP ETF flows.  Institutional demand for XRP stagnates The total assets held by U.S Spot XRP ETFs were only $1.25 billion at press time. This was a fraction of the overall XRP assets ($68B) held by whales. However, there has been a strong correlation between ETF flows and short-term XRP price action.  To an extent, the whale accumulation might also be positively correlated with ETF flows. Notably, the whales accelerated accumulation in late 2025, and this trend coincided with strong ETF inflows. This was right after the products debuted during the crypto winter (November 2025).   However, the ETF demand tapered off into the Christmas holidays and has remained stagnant in 2026.  In fact, the same muted ETF demand in 2026 was reflected in the on-chain whale demand trend, which has been flat at around 68% of supply for the past few months.  Consequently, the altcoin has struggled below $1.5 since Q2 began. Overall, it has remained range-bound between $1.3 and $1.6 in the first half of 2026. The sideways structure may extend unless the ETF demand improves and retail jumps on.  Only 2% chance of an XRP bullish breakout On Deribit, Options traders were only pricing a 2% chance that XRP could clear $2 by the end of May. This further underscored the low market expectations of a bullish breakout, despite record whale accumulation.  Whether this lukewarm outlook is due to the typical summer lull is not clear right now. However, the low interest in altcoins is not unique to XRP. In fact, the broader altcoin sector has trended lower or stagnated as BTC dominated investor interest.   Final Summary XRP whales have accumulated a record 45.8B tokens, worth $68 billion - Marking the highest record since 2018.  However, weak spot ETF inflows and subdued retail demand could extend the $1.3-$1.6 price range.