XRP balances on three of the world’s busiest trading exchanges, Upbit, Bitstamp, and Binance, have plunged in the past week, setting off a new round of chatter about who is moving so many tokens and why.
On South Korea’s Upbit, the drop is impossible to miss. For months the exchange carried a steady 60-65 billion XRP. By 16 June, that cushion had collapsed to roughly 18 billion.
The sell-off in spot markets was far less dramatic: XRP slipped from its familiar $2–$3.25 range to $2.16, suggesting the tokens did not rush straight to order books.
Traders tracking the flows say the bulk likely went to self-custody wallets or over-the-counter desks, a move that usually points to longer-term holding rather than a quick sale.
Bitstamp, one of the oldest crypto platforms still standing, logged a similar pattern, just on a smaller scale. Exchange wallets carried 50-60 million XRP for most of the year. That figure now sits near 9.8 million, with prices matching Upbit’s $2.16 print on 16 June.
A shrinkage of that size in a single week is rare for Bitstamp and hints at large players moving coins off-exchange, possibly consolidating holdings or preparing for cross-platform shifts.
Binance, the industry’s heavyweight, rounds out the picture. From January through mid-June, its XRP reserve hovered between 2.8 billion and 2.9 billion. Latest readings show only about 2.2 billion.
While the absolute number dwarfs every other venue, the trend line matches Upbit and Bitstamp: tokens are leaving, not entering, centralised pools.
A brief Twitter exchange has poured more fuel on the fire. Analyst Chad Steingraber flagged the reserve slide; user @bradwifhat replied “nah” and posted a string of wallet addresses tied to Binance. Blockchain data confirms that one account—labelled “Binance (5)”—alone holds roughly 1.46 billion XRP, or 1.46% of the entire supply.
Several other Binance-linked wallets, including the well-known XRP-BF2 address, control hundreds of millions more. Much of that stash sits in Ripple’s time-locked escrow contracts, but the concentration has revived the long-running debate over how decentralised XRP’s real float actually is.
What happens next depends on whether the withdrawals pause or accelerate. If most of the tokens have simply moved to cold storage, day-to-day liquidity could tighten, making sudden price swings more likely.
If they reappear on rival venues, the impact may prove fleeting. For now, on-chain trackers show far fewer XRP coins parked on exchanges than just a week ago, and that alone is enough to keep traders glued to their dashboards.
Also Read: Ripple’s XRP Gears Up For 1 Billion Token Unlock, What’s Next?
