Ripple Leaves October’s 1 Billion XRP Unlock Untouched for 26 Days: Will Swell Week Change That?
Ripple opened Swell 2026 in New York on Tuesday, October 27, a day after winning final OCC approval for its national trust bank, while the 1 billion XRP it unlocked from escrow on October 1 has still not left its wallets. That last part is the XRP Ripple story most of this week’s coverage misses.
For a token that has lost 15.8% in a month, a billion coins sitting still is worth a closer look. XRP trades at $1.29, up 0.3% in 24 hours, on $1.35 billion in volume.
🐋 Wallets holding at least 10M XRP now control 46.87B tokens. That represents roughly 68.5% of XRP’s supply, the highest share held by this group since November 2022.
📈 The key signal is that these massive holders have kept… pic.twitter.com/YOvZB3pT08
A bank charter and a yield product for corporate cash, and neither one uses XRP directly.
CEO Brad Garlinghouse framed the charter as proof that crypto and banks work better together.
Big news heading into @RippleSwell: the @USOCC has granted final approval for Ripple National Trust Bank.
This gives Ripple a federally supervised platform to support $RLUSD and provide digital asset custody to enterprises.
The biggest holders are adding, but the selling pressure hasn’t gone away. Start with Ripple itself.
On October 1, four escrow contracts released 1 billion XRP into two Ripple wallets that XRPScan labels “Ripple 10” and “Ripple 11”, 500 million each. A check of the XRP Ledger on October 27 shows both wallets still hold those 500 million XRP, and neither has sent a single payment since.
Each has another 500 million XRP escrow that matures on Sunday, November 1. In other words, by the weekend, about 2 billion unlocked XRP could be sitting in just two Ripple wallets, the biggest XRP Ripple supply question of the month.
Whales are stacking. Santiment’s count shows wallets holding at least 10 million XRP now control 46.87 billion tokens, about 68.5% of supply, the highest share since November 2022. The growth sits at the very top: analyst Ali Martinez noted that wallets holding 10 million to 100 million XRP fell from 351 to 339 between October 19 and 25.
Exchanges tell the other half. CryptoQuant counted 6.05 billion XRP sent to exchanges in the 30 days to October 19, the most since March, while the 90-day average of whale withdrawals dropped to $49.7 million, the lowest since October 2021. U.S. spot XRP ETFs lost $3.61 million on Monday, all from Bitwise’s fund, which leaves it with $1.47 billion in assets.
Not yet. XRP closed yesterday at $1.3092 on Binance and trades near $1.2990, under both its 50-day exponential moving average (EMA), a moving average that weights recent prices more heavily, at $1.3601, and its 200-day EMA at $1.3709.
An untouched unlock isn’t a promise that Ripple won’t sell; it can still relock the coins or move them after the conference. That is why the wallets to watch this week aren’t on an exchange. If Ripple 10 or Ripple 11 start sending XRP out after Swell, that will say more about this month’s supply than any keynote.
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Alex is a seasoned cryptocurrency trader and market analyst with over seven years of active experience in the digital asset space. Since entering the markets in 2017, Alex has specialized in identifying emerging "meta" trends and high-volatility narratives. Notably, Alex... Read More
Asanat Analysis — Why it matters
Ripple's decision to leave 1 billion XRP unlocked but undeployed for 26 days signals restraint during a period of regulatory tailwinds—the October OCC approval for a national trust bank charter represents genuine institutional legitimacy, not just regulatory relief. This restraint contrasts sharply with historical escrow unlock patterns and suggests either internal capital sufficiency or deliberate market management ahead of Swell, their annual conference.
The timing matters structurally: Swell 2026 traditionally generates partnership announcements and use-case updates that could drive organic demand. By sitting on unlocked supply rather than dumping it, Ripple avoids competing with its own announcements. However, this also reveals a core XRP dynamic—the token's price action remains tethered to Ripple's release discipline rather than organic network adoption metrics, a pattern that persists despite RippleNet expansion.
Watch whether Swell announcements correlate with escrow deployment. If Ripple announces new corridors or institutional deployments but continues witholding the billion XRP, it signals confidence in demand independent of supply pressure. Conversely, deployment during the conference would indicate the announcements alone aren't sufficient to drive adoption velocity.