Even though the world of digital money, also known as the crypto market, might feel a bit slow and worried right now, some digital networks are actually seeing a lot of activity.
One great example is the XRP Ledger (XRPL), which is the special digital system where the digital currency XRP operates. It recently broke a new record for how busy its network is.
A company that studies digital currency data, CryptoQuant, discovered that the XRPL saw a big increase in activity happening directly on its network. This kind of action is called on-chain activity, and it led to a new high for something called “network velocity.”
XRPL Sets New Speed Record
Think of network velocity like how often money changes hands in a regular economy. For the XRP Ledger, this measure tracks how frequently XRP, the digital currency, is being moved around from one user to another on its network. It shows how much economic activity and how many transactions are happening.
On December 2, this “velocity” number suddenly shot up to a new record of 0.0324. The last time its velocity was close to this level was in September 2025.
When the velocity goes up like this, it’s a strong sign that XRP is actively being bought, sold, or moved between different investors. It means the XRP isn’t just sitting still in cold wallets (which are like secure, offline storage accounts for digital money that aren’t actively being used).
CryptoQuant explained that “Such a surge typically signifies high liquidity and substantial involvement from traders or significant movements by whales.”
- Liquidity: This means that XRP can be easily bought or sold without causing its price to change too much.
- Whales: These are individuals or groups who own a very large amount of a cryptocurrency.
Regardless of what the overall market is doing, this data confirms that the XRP network is experiencing one of its busiest times in 2025, with many users actively participating.
More Activity Happening
A recent report from CryptoPotato also supports this idea, showing that large holders of XRP have been moving their digital assets.
The XRPL has seen some interesting shifts among its investors:
- The number of wallets holding at least 100 million XRP has shrunk by over 20% in the last eight weeks. This means 569 very large wallets are no longer in this top group.
- However, even with fewer large wallets, the amount of XRP held by the remaining “whales” (those still holding 100M+ XRP) has actually grown! They now collectively hold more than 48 billion XRP, which is the highest amount in seven years.
This suggests that the big holders who stayed in the 100M+ group have been buying and collecting even more XRP. This trend of accumulation (buying and holding more assets over time) started in 2023 and has continued for the past two years, no matter what the market conditions were.
At the same time, a different group of XRP holders has started to sell some of their assets. Between December 2 and 3, wallets holding between 1 million and 10 million XRP moved or sold 150 million XRP. This group of investors has been selling their holdings in smaller amounts over the last few months, making it a regular pattern for them.
These developments are happening while a new type of investment fund, called spot XRP exchange-traded funds (ETFs), in the United States, is attracting a lot of money. A spot ETF is an investment fund that directly holds an asset (like XRP) and allows people to buy and sell shares of that fund on regular stock exchanges, much like company stocks. This lets investors gain exposure to XRP’s price movements without having to buy and store the digital currency themselves.
These XRP ETFs are even attracting more money than similar funds for Bitcoin and Ethereum, showing a growing interest in XRP as an investment.