Back in June, the XRP community member better known online as “XRPWallets” mapped 52 Coinbase cold wallets containing somewhere around 970,000,000 XRP in total. Ten wallets with about 26,800,000 XRP each and 42 wallets holding roughly 16,800,000 was the split.
At that point, it looked like deep XRP storage of the leading U.S. cryptocurrency exchange. But then, just over two months later, the structure has broken apart, and now only 16 wallets remain at the lower tier, while many of the larger allocations have either been emptied, diluted into sub-wallets or moved elsewhere.
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Digging deeper into numbers reveals that, by late August, Coinbase’s XRP reserves had shrunk by nearly 73%, leaving just a fraction of the once-consolidated 1,000,000,000 XRP under the same addresses.
The same pattern, according to “XRPWallets,” was also spotted at BitGo and Bitstamp, where legacy cold storage is being broken down into smaller operational accounts. The similarity suggests restructuring, but the size of the drop at Coinbase makes the move harder to dismiss as routine housekeeping.
XRP supply squeeze on Coinbase theory
On one side, a redistribution of this kind can simply mean custody rebalancing, regulatory preparation or even client withdrawals being settled together.
On the other hand, XRP is currently trading close to $2.91, a level that has repeatedly acted as resistance through the year, and shrinking exchange balances often attract attention as a potential supply signal.
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With Coinbase’s holdings now 73% lighter than in June, the unanswered question is whether this is a sign of tightening offerings or just a behind-the-scenes wallet adjustment.
No matter the answer, the result is the same: XRP’s presence on one of the largest U.S. exchanges has thinned by 73% over the summer.
