A recent comment by crypto analyst CryptoTank drew attention to a long-standing misconception about the size of the XRP community. His post focused on the widely quoted figure of seven million XRP wallets and explained why this number does not represent the number of actual owners.
The clarification comes at a time when XRP is now set to start receiving institutional inflows from the recently launched Canary Spot XRP ETF.
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Why the number of wallets is not equal to the number of owners
CryptoTank noticed that almost 7 million wallets holding XRP does not mean millions of people own the asset. He noted that he personally maintains approximately 30 wallets, and most dedicated XRP investors typically operate between four and six on average. This means that one individual can appear multiple times in on-chain statistics, making the total number of wallets an unreliable indicator of how many actual participants there are.
The view is simple: the actual number of different owners of XRP is far less than many assume, and he believes the true number is comfortably under 1 million worldwide. This paints a picture of a community that is still in its early stages compared to other major digital assets. If only a fraction of those seven million addresses belong to unique individuals, then the people who own XRP today represent a much smaller, far earlier group than he estimates.
CryptoTank described this group as “way ahead” of the world, meaning that the current owners occupy a position that could become far more valuable when wider participation finally arrives.
The small holder base means that any significant increase in demand, whether retail or institutional, could have a huge price effect as the price of XRP has yet to experience the kind of massive influx seen in previous cycles for Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Institutional Spread with Spot XRP ETF
This discussion comes at an important time for XRP, especially with the introduction of the newly launched Spot XRP ETF in the United States. Product extends the reach of XRP further its group of early adopters, allowing institutions and retail traders in regulated markets to also invest in the cryptocurrency.
If the true population of XRP holders is small, the arrival of demand for ETFs could become a major turning point. As inflows grow, this new access point could mark the beginning of a shift away from the early owner community to a wider institutional and retail audience.
Speaking of inflows, Canary’s Spot XRP ETF began its first full day of trading with $243.05 million in inflows on Nov. 14, according to SoSoValue data.
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This it was not reflected in the price of XRP, because the cryptocurrency is in decline along with the rest of the market. At the time of writing, XRP was trading at $2.26, down 1.4% in the last 24 hours.
Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
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