After a strong start to the year, the XRP price has struggled to build sustained bullish momentum in 2025. These issues are highlighted in the altcoin’s downward spiral since hitting an all-time high of $3.65 in July 2025.
The launch of spot XRP exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the United States is expected to provide some relief from increased demand for the price of the underlying asset. However, the latest on-chain analysis shows that the ETFs have failed to reduce bearish pressure on the XRP price.
The price of XRP could drop to $1.5 if currency inflows continue
In a Quicktake post on the CryptoQuant platform, pseudonymous analyst PelinayPA revealed that the activity of a specific group of XRP whales has been the main driving force behind the steady price decline. The market expert has provided an ETF angle on this whale activity in recent weeks.
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PelinayPA has drawn insights from the Exchange Inflow – Value Bands chart, which tracks and sorts the amount of a specific cryptocurrency flowing through different investor cohorts to centralized exchanges within a given period. Recent data shows that the majority of inflows are coming from the 100K-1M XRP and 1M+ XRP bands.
PelinayPA wrote in the Quicktake post:
After each major inflow spike on the chart, the price forms a lower high and lower low structure, clearly showing that supply exceeds demand. This happens because there is no strong new spot buyer in the market. Although whales do not dump aggressively, the continued increase in available supply continues to drive the price down.
Using the inflow intensity and price reactions, the crypto analyst stated that the first major support zone is around $1.82 – $1.87. According to PelinayPA, this region represents an area with significant historical buying activity that has provided stability in the past.
However, the XRP price could fall to a level of $1.50 – $1.60 if whale inflows continue to rise. As previously concluded by the analyst, large transfers to centralized exchanges are often seen as a signal of impending selling pressure.
XRP whales sold off their holdings as spot ETFs went live
As we saw with its predecessors – Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, the similar exchange-traded XRP products were expected to create institutional demand, leading to higher prices for the altcoin. However, the story was quite the opposite for the XRP price, which is down almost 50% from its all-time high.
Market data shows that the US-based spot XRP ETFs have not recorded a negative outflow day since their trading debut in mid-November. According to SoSoValue, the exchange-traded funds have total net assets of more than $1.14 billion.
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Interestingly, PelinayPA hypothesized that the reason behind XRP’s steady decline is that whales started selling their holdings on exchanges as ETF expectations increased. This provided sell-side liquidity for the retail investors looking to buy the ETF launch news.
PelinayPA said this event explains why the XRP price is under selling pressure every time it approaches the $1.95 level. The market analyst noted that inflows on the exchanges should dry up first if the altcoin will experience a bullish run soon.
At the time of writing, the price of XRP is around $1.90, reflecting an increase of more than 3% in the last 24 hours.
Featured image from iStock, chart from TradingView