XRP on exchanges hits 8 year low, but historical data exposes a brutal flaw in the popular “moon” narrative

Glassnode data shows that XRP’s exchange balances hit their lowest level since 2018 in late December, sparking the usual wave of accumulation phase speculation and “tight supply = moon” commentary.

While the eight-year low encompasses the entire exchange ecosystem, CryptoQuant data for Binance offers a recent window into whether these troughs actually precede rallies.

Binance’s XRP reserves dropped to roughly 2.6 billion by mid-December 2025, matching the July 2024 low, after peaking above 3.5 billion in early September.

The question isn’t whether supply thinned, but whether prior episodes of similarly low Binance reserves preceded medium-term outperformance, or whether the pattern is just noise dressed up as signal.

First drawdown into the July 2024 low

After an early-year build-up from roughly 2.6 billion to just over 3.0 billion XRP, Binance reserves rolled over around late March and ground lower into early July, bottoming near 2.7 billion.

According to the CryptoQuant chart, XRP traded roughly between $0.48 and $0.71 during the second quarter of 2024, averaging $0.56.

Through May, it drifted lower into the low-to-mid $0.50s. By late June, it hugged just above $0.50, with the local trough slightly below that, around $0.48.

The explosive move from sub-$1 prices in October to roughly $2 by November and over $3 in January 2025 happened months later, once reserves had already climbed back above 3 billion.

Monthly closes jumped from about $0.51 in October 2024 to $1.94 in November, $2.08 in December, and $3.04 in January 2025.

The July 2024 low in reserves coincided with depressed price, but the big rally arrived only after a long lag and after exchange balances had re-expanded, not at the moment of tightest supply.

Post-spike cooling with falling reserves

After the price spike in the fourth quarter of 2024, reserves on Binance sat above 3.2 billion XRP in October and November 2024, then trended down into early 2025, reaching roughly 2.8 billion by March.

That second clear tightening episode came from elevated levels rather than from a multi-year low. Price behavior was straightforward: it cooled off.

XRP closed around $2.08 in December 2024, peaked near $3.04 in January 2025, then slipped back to roughly $2.09 between February and March, trading in the low-$2s through spring.

As Binance reserves quietly bled lower from post-rally highs, XRP mostly lost altitude rather than breaking into a new leg higher. Tightening here looked like profit-taking and rotation into self-custody while the price corrected.

From September spike to multi-year lows

The most relevant tightening is the current one.

On Sept. 1, XRP reserves across major exchanges spiked higher by about 1.2 billion tokens in a single day. Binance’s share jumped from roughly 2.93 billion to 3.54 billion XRP.

From October onward, the CryptoQuant chart shows that XRP supply reversed direction. Binance reserves slid from about 3 billion in early October to roughly 2.7 billion by late November, then to around 2.6 billion by mid-December, the lowest level since July 2024.

Over that same window, XRP monthly closes drifted down from about $2.85 in September to $2.51 in October, $2.16 in November, and $2.03 in December.

That’s roughly a 30% price drawdown while supply on Binance was tightening. So far, this looks much more like “tight supply plus weak tape” than a classic supply-squeeze rally.

The market has shifted coins off Binance into ETFs and self-custody, but the spot price has continued to bleed lower into the $1.80-$2.00 range.

What the pattern shows and why it might be different this time

Across the 2024-2025 window on the CryptoQuant chart, there are really only two true trough bands in Binance reserves at or near today’s levels: July 2024, around 2.7 billion XRP, and the current zone, around 2.6-2.7 billion.

In between, reserves fell a couple of times from higher levels, but those were drawdowns from above 3 billion rather than fresh lows.

In the second quarter of 2024, tightening into the July low first coincided with underperformance, followed by a big rally months later, after balances had risen again.

That’s an ambiguous bullish precedent at best. In early 2025 and again recently, the pattern is simpler: reserves trend down, and prices trend down with them. Tight supply has not yet turned into an obvious squeeze-style upside in the 30 to 90-day window.

So far, it’s more a story of reduced sell-side liquidity during a correction than a clean buy signal.
The July 2024 trough occurred before spot XRP ETFs existed.

The current drawdown occurs in an environment where ETFs have attracted over $1 billion in net inflows, with assets under management near $1.25 billion and zero outflow days recorded through late 2025.

Those coins live in custodial wallets rather than on trading venues, so some exchange scarcity reflects structural demand and plumbing, such as ETF mechanics shifting coins off centralized order books, rather than pure accumulation by conviction buyers.

Whale behavior adds ambiguity. Supply distribution data shows big swings in large XRP holder cohorts through 2025, including periods where whales dumped hundreds of millions of tokens even as ETFs bought and exchange balances fell.

In the 2024-2025 Binance chart, every sustained tightening episode is followed by either sideways-to-lower prices or a very delayed rally. The only real bullish trough case in July 2024 required investors to sit through months of chop and a rebuild in exchange balances before the big move.

That makes today’s low-reserve reading interesting, but far from a guaranteed springboard.

Low exchange supply has been a necessary but insufficient condition for XRP’s upside, and the data don’t support the hopium narrative that tight supply mechanically leads to rallies.

What they do show is that when the next catalyst hits, and it can be regulatory clarity, institutional adoption, or a shift in macro sentiment, there will be less supply available on exchanges to absorb demand. Whether that catalyst materializes in 30, 90, or 180 days remains uncertain.