Data from Glassnode shows that XRP currency balances hit their lowest levels since 2018 in late December, prompting the usual wave of accumulation phase speculation and “tight supply = moon” commentary.
While the eight-year low spans the entire exchange ecosystem, CryptoQuant data for Binance provides a recent insight into whether these troughs actually precede rallies.
Binance’s XRP reserves fell to roughly 2.6 billion in mid-December 2025, matching the July 2024 low. peaking above 3.5 billion in early September.
The question is not whether supply has thinned, but whether previous episodes of similarly low Binance reserves preceded medium-term outperformance, or whether the pattern is just noise dressed up as a signal.
First drop to July 2024 low
After building at the beginning of the year from roughly 2.6 billion to just over 3.0 billion XRP, Binance’s reserves rolled over around late March and fell to a low of almost 2.7 billion in early July.
According to the CryptoQuant chart, XRP traded roughly between $0.48 and $0.71 in Q2 2024, with an average of $0.56.
In May, the price dropped to the low to mid $0.50s. At the end of June, the price rose just above $0.50, while the local low was slightly below that, around $0.48.
The explosive move from prices below $1 in October to roughly $2 in November and over $3 in January 2025 occurred months later, when reserves had already risen above $3 billion.
Monthly closes increased from approximately $0.51 in October 2024 to $1.94 in November, $2.08 in December and $3.04 in January 2025.
The low point in reserves in July 2024 coincided with a lower price, but the big rally came only after a long delay and after currency balances expanded again, and not at the time of tightest supply.
Cooling after peaks with decreasing reserves
After the price spike in the fourth quarter of 2024, reserves on Binance exceeded 3.2 billion
That second apparent tightening episode came from elevated levels rather than a multi-year low. The price behavior was simple: it cooled down.
XRP closed around $2.08 in December 2024, peaked around $3.04 in January 2025, and then fell back to around $2.09 between February and March, trading in the low $2s through the spring.
While Binance’s reserves quietly edged lower from post-rally highs, XRP mostly lost height instead of breaking a new leg higher. The tightening here looked like profit taking and a turn to restraint as the price corrected.
From September peak to multi-year lows
The most relevant tightening is the current one.
On September 1, XRP reserves on major exchanges pinned higher with approximately 1.2 billion tokens in one day. Binance’s shares rose from roughly 2.93 billion to 3.54 billion XRP.
As of October, the CryptoQuant chart shows that XRP supply has changed direction. Binance reserves fell from about 3 billion in early October to about 2.7 billion at the end of November and then to about 2.6 billion in mid-December, the lowest level since July 2024.
During the same period, XRP’s monthly close fell from around $2.85 in September to $2.51 in October, $2.16 in November and $2.03 in December.
That’s a price drop of about 30%, while the supply on Binance became smaller. So far, this looks much more like a “tight supply plus weak tape” than a classic supply squeeze rally.
The market has moved coins from Binance to ETFs and self-custody, but the spot price has fallen further to the $1.80-$2.00 range.
What the pattern shows and why it might be different this time
In the 2024-2025 period on the CryptoQuant chart, there are actually only two real trough bands in Binance reserves at or near current levels: July 2024, about 2.7 billion XRP, and the current zone, about 2.6-2.7 billion.
In between, reserves fell a few times from higher levels, but those were drops above 3 billion rather than new lows.
In the second quarter of 2024, the tightening to the July low first coincided with underperformance, followed by a big rally months later after balance sheets rose again.
That’s an ambiguously bullish precedent at best. In early 2025 and recently, the pattern is simpler: reserves fall and prices fall with them. The tight supply has not yet turned into clear upward pressure in the period from 30 to 90 days.
So far, it’s more a story of reduced sell-side liquidity during a correction than a clean buy signal.
The July 2024 low occurred before spot XRP ETFs existed.
The current pullback is taking place in an environment that has attracted ETFs net inflows of over $1 billionwith assets under management of nearly $1.25 billion and zero outflow days through the end of 2025.
These coins are held in custodial wallets rather than on trading platforms, so some of the currency scarcity reflects structural demand and plumbing, such as ETF mechanisms that pull coins from centralized order books, rather than pure accumulation by convinced buyers.
The behavior of whales creates ambiguity. Supply distribution data shows wide swings in large cohorts of XRP holders through 2025, including periods when whales dumped hundreds of millions of tokens even as ETFs bought and exchange rates fell.
In the 2024-2025 Binance chart, each episode of sustained tightening is followed by a sideways move to lower prices or a very delayed rally. The one and only bullish trough in July 2024 required investors to endure months of turmoil and a rebuilding of currency balances before the big move.
That makes the current low-reserve reading interesting, but far from a guaranteed springboard.
Low exchange supply has been a necessary but insufficient condition for XRP’s upside, and the data does not support the hopium story that tight supply mechanically drives rallies.
What they do show is that when the next catalyst arrives, which could be clear regulation, institutional adoption or a shift in macro sentiment, there will be less supply available on the exchanges to absorb demand. Whether that catalyst will manifest within 30, 90 or 180 days remains uncertain.