Caught something interesting on-chain - XRP retail wallets just hit 1.1 million, which is literally the highest number ever recorded. Pretty wild considering the XRP price has taken a beating, down roughly 52% since October 2025. But here's the thing that stood out to me: instead of bailing, retail investors seem to be loading up.

So the numbers according to Santiment show that wallets holding between 1,000 and 100,000 XRP jumped by about 77,500 since October. That's a decent chunk of new money coming in despite the downtrend. Currently sitting around 806k wallets in the 1k-10k range and about 299k in the 10k-100k tier. What caught my eye is that these retail addresses have been accumulating XRP aggressively - they've picked up over 500 million tokens since the downturn started. The XRP price might be struggling, but the buying pressure from smaller holders is legit.

Interestingly, their total balance just hit a new high too, around 10.56 billion XRP combined. That's up from 10.04 billion back in October. So retail isn't just buying more wallets, they're actually stacking more coins per wallet. Feels like classic accumulation behavior during weakness.

Now here's where it gets mixed - the whale situation is all over the place. The mid-tier whales (100k to 10M XRP) actually sold off hard, dumping about 3 billion coins. But the mega whales with 10M to 100M XRP? They've been on a buying spree, picking up 3.42 billion tokens. So you've got retail consolidating their positions while big money is split between sellers and accumulators.

The XRP price sitting around $1.41 right now, but the chain data suggests retail conviction is holding strong despite the volatility. Whether this accumulation pays off obviously depends on where the market goes from here, but the willingness to keep buying at lower prices is definitely noteworthy. This kind of retail resilience during downturns sometimes signals where smart money thinks things are headed.