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Anyone tracking XRP’s on-chain flows over the past few weeks would have noticed a consistent pattern: anonymous wallets have been sending millions of XRP to Coinbase, and these transfers have been massive.
The latest transfer happened earlier today when 16.71 million XRP — just over $51.8 million — moved from an address with no public ties to Coinbase. This amount is not random; it is nearly identical to the "slice size" that has repeatedly appeared in major U.S. exchange's recent wallet reshuffles.
The backstory begins in June when an "XRPWallets" account mapped 52 cold wallets linked to Coinbase. Ten of those wallets held about 26.8 million XRP each, and the remaining 42 wallets held around 16.8 million XRP each. This amounts to a combined total of nearly 974 million XRP.
Now, according to the same tracker, only 23 of those wallets fit the recognizable pattern. Each wallet contains roughly 16.5 million XRP, for a total of around 379.5 million. That is about 594 million XRP less than the holdings seen in June, a drop of more than 60% in the set of wallets the tracker can currently identify.
The new inflow of 16.71 million XRP fits neatly into that same "slice size," hinting at an internal redistribution rather than a random inflow.
Missing link
A clear reason for the shuffle is unclear. The tokens may have moved to new wallets, an external custodian or been withdrawn by a few large clients. Maybe those platforms are connected to Ripple's ODL network.
While the blockchain can show the tokens' location and movement, it does not explain why. Until Coinbase addresses this, the visible evidence is a shrinking public stash, repeating numbers and the sense of a hidden plan.
Dan Burgin
Vladislav Sopov
U.Today Editorial Team