XRP ETF Investors Sit 13% Underwater as Buying Continues

ETF Buyers 13% Underwater

Investors in United States spot exchange-traded funds for XRP, vehicles that hold the token directly rather than through derivatives, have put $1.80 billion into the products since launch. With the XRP price trading near $1.38 on Friday, that stake is worth about $1.56 billion, a paper loss of roughly 13%, and the shortfall widened as the token fell about 8% over the past week to sit 11% below its Sept. 23 high. The buying has not flinched. ETF flow data from SoSoValue shows the funds posted their strongest month of 2026 in August, when subscriptions arrived while XRP ran 28% higher within the month, before the token surrendered much of that advance into October. Issuers disclose these flows daily, which makes the record unusually clean. Since Sept. 18, the group has logged a single day of net redemptions, a $3.28 million outflow on Oct. 2. The pattern held through this week's selloff: on Oct. 8, as XRP dipped to $1.32 in a broad crypto decline, Franklin's XRP fund absorbed another $8.17 million in inflows. The deepest hole sits in Canary's XRPC, where assets of $335.7 million trail cumulative subscriptions of $486.8 million by roughly 31%. A spot ETF issues shares against cash and buys the underlying coin, so every new dollar becomes direct demand for XRP. History says investors trapped at elevated entries tend to sell into weakness; this group has done the opposite. Inflows have slowed since late September but every session has stayed positive, and the funds deployed earlier subscriptions to buy XRP outright, which leaves their holdings fully exposed to the token's drawdown.

1.58 Billion XRP Out of Exchanges

On-chain data shows holders are in no rush to follow the price down. Glassnode's exchange net position change, a gauge of how much XRP entered or left exchange wallets over rolling 30-day windows, printed a net outflow of 1.53 billion XRP on Sept. 25 with the token near $1.57. By Oct. 8, with the market near $1.38, the reading had deepened only to 1.58 billion XRP. A holder exodus would lift deposits and drag the gauge toward zero; that has not happened, which points to a base of owners willing to sit through the drawdown. The decline itself has been orderly: XRP peaked near $1.70 on Aug. 22 after a 28% August run, a cycle top that stayed far below the coin's all-time high, and September's recovery stalled at $1.65. The token has also spent 2026 trailing the broader altcoin market, a gap we quantified in a report on the 28% yearly drop. Oct. 8 delivered the week's sharpest test when the dip carried XRP below $1.37, the Fibonacci 0.618 retracement, before buyers closed it back above the line. While price holds $1.37, a push toward $1.43 and then $1.48 stays in play, and a recovery through $1.66 and $1.70 would break the sequence of lower highs. A daily close under $1.37, followed by a loss of $1.30, is the scenario that would strain that patience and open the path toward $1.20, with $0.92 possible if the wider market weakens. Our XRP technical analysis tracks the same ladder daily. From a tokenomics angle, coins leaving exchanges for self-custody shrink the sell-side float, and the ETF funds themselves added fewer than 100 million XRP over the past 30 days, so most of the 1.58 billion that left exchanges moved through hands with no fund mandate.

Our composite read places the market in a narrow corridor: XRP trades at $1.3811, up 2.58% over 24 hours, between a $1.3559 support scored 100 out of 100 and a $1.4411 resistance that also rates 100/100, with RSI at 41.34, a bearish MACD and a sideways trend. Positioning leans one way: open interest near $957 million and a long/short account ratio of 2.97, roughly three of every four accounts long. Stop-driven order types beneath the $1.3559 shelf could accelerate a break, putting those leveraged longs at liquidation risk; reclaiming $1.4411 would hand the underwater ETF book its first real relief. Attention then turns to the Swell conference, where Ripple CTO David Schwartz headlines the Swell 2026 keynote on Oct. 28. Two weeks of selling deepened the exchange deficit by only about 50 million XRP, some 3% of the 1.58 billion already gone: this market is being held, not abandoned.