On March 16, the price of XRP broke through $1.60 before retreating to $1.5125, but the more significant event of the day was not the price itself.
On-Chain Data Insights
According to charts from Santiment, two metrics were tracked from February 15 to March 17: daily active addresses and total holders. On March 16, the number of daily active addresses reached 46,767, significantly higher than the baseline activity in February and early March. Although previous peaks during the same period reached similar levels, they did not coincide with the milestone in the number of holders.
The number of 7.7 million holders is a more structurally significant indicator. Changes in the number of holders occur more slowly than daily active addresses. It does not fluctuate in the short term but gradually accumulates as new wallets join and hold XRP. The first-time breach of 7.7 million signifies an unprecedented expansion of the network's ownership base, which has not been seen even during periods of significantly higher XRP prices.
The peak in network activity coinciding with the record number of holders at the moment the price broke through $1.50 is no coincidence. This reflects genuine user engagement with the network, driven not merely by derivatives activity or external momentum-induced price fluctuations.
Price Background
From Binance's 4-hour chart, trading from March 8 to March 17 shows that XRP hovered between $1.38 and $1.45 during the first half of this period, reaching a local high of $1.44 around March 10, before retracing and retesting the $1.38 to $1.40 range mid-week. The recovery from that retracement started slowly, but on March 16, a candle with the highest trading volume saw XRP surge from about $1.42 to over $1.53 in a single transaction.
The trading peak on March 16 reached $1.60, represented on the chart as a long upper shadow, after which sellers pulled the price back to the $1.51 to $1.54 area for consolidation. This upper shadow represents profit-taking at the trading peak rather than a structural rejection. As of the time of writing, XRP remains above $1.50, maintaining the integrity of this week's breakout, even after the intraday high retracement.
Significance of the Holder Milestone
According to previous reports, CryptoQuant's open interest data indicates that the derivatives market for XRP has significantly shrunk over the past nine months, with open interest dropping from $1.75 billion to $484.5 million. The conclusion drawn from this analysis is that spot investors now have a primary influence on XRP's direction, and sustainable upward movement requires genuine spot demand rather than leveraged positions.
The first-time breach of 7.7 million holders as reported by Santiment is direct evidence of this spot demand. Each new holder represents a wallet that holds XRP.