Who Really Controls XRP Price in 2026? Retail Investors Own Half of XRP Supply, But There’s a Twist

A market structure analysis circulating on X this week put forward an interesting claim about XRP: retail investors are not pushing the price up, but they are likely the main reason it has not fallen further.

The data behind the argument draws on April 2026 on-chain estimates. Around 50 to 55% of all XRP sits in self-custody or on exchange wallets. Institutions and ETFs hold just 1 to 2% of total supply. Market makers account for 60 to 70% of actual price movement on any given day.

The conclusion the analysis draws from those numbers is that XRP’s price floor is being held up not by active buying but by millions of holders simply refusing to sell. With seven to eight million activated wallets and growing numbers of multi-year holders, a large chunk of supply has effectively been taken off the market through inaction rather than demand.

At current prices, the analysis estimates retail conviction accounts for roughly 40 to 60% of XRP’s effective price floor.

Morgan Is Not Buying It

Bill Morgan read the analysis and explained that Ripple is still the largest single seller of XRP in the market, offloading hundreds of millions of tokens every month. If supply dynamics were truly driving prices, those sales would show up as consistent downward pressure. They do not. That alone, Morgan argued, undermines the retail supply thesis.

More importantly, he pointed to something the analysis does not adequately address: XRP’s price largely tracks Bitcoin. When Bitcoin rises, XRP rises. When Bitcoin falls, XRP falls. That pattern holds regardless of how much Ripple sells or how tightly retail holders grip their tokens.

“The predominant explanatory factor remains Bitcoin price movement,” Morgan wrote.

Where That Leaves Things

XRP is sitting in a phase where retail holders dominate ownership but institutions dominate price movement. The gap between those two realities is where most of the debate lives.

Whether belief and holding behavior are genuinely supporting the floor or whether Bitcoin is simply doing all the heavy lifting is a question the data alone cannot fully settle. But Morgan’s challenge is the one the retail conviction argument needs to answer before it can claim the stronger case.