XRP is trading in a narrow $1.30–$1.38 range this week, but the on-chain picture is anything but calm. According to Santiment, the average XRP trader active over the past 30 days is down 47% — and the token’s 30-day market-value-to-realized-value (MVRV) ratio has dropped to its lowest level since December 2020. Historically, such deep MVRV readings have preceded price recoveries, as retail traders capitulate and the asset enters what analysts at the firm call “extremely undervalued” territory.
What the MVRV signal means
MVRV compares an asset’s market cap to the realized cap — the price at which each coin last moved. A deeply negative reading like XRP’s current one suggests that most recent buyers are sitting on heavy losses. Santiment notes that MVRV tends to revert toward 0% after hitting these lows, implying XRP may be pricing in more bearishness than fundamentals justify. The last time the metric was this low, in late 2020, XRP was trading below $0.25. It rallied more than 700% over the following year.
The rally that turned sour
XRP’s strong run from late 2024 into early 2025 sucked in plenty of latecomers. That rally has since been wiped out: the token has lost more than half its market value since last summer. Many traders chased the move near local highs and are now underwater. Long-term holders, however, remain optimistic — citing the SEC’s ongoing regulatory progress, the potential for a spot XRP ETF, and growing adoption of Ripple’s payment infrastructure. That bullish narrative has held the price from sliding much further, but it hasn’t stopped the pain for short-term speculators.
Fear on social media, activity on Binance
Sentiment data from Santiment also shows that the ratio of bullish to bearish comments on social media has fallen to 1.1 — barely more positive comments than negative ones. Periods of such extreme fear and skepticism have historically acted as contrarian signals for XRP. Yet the same data set shows that not everyone is running away. CryptoQuant reports rising speculative activity around XRP perpetual futures on Binance. The volume imbalance for these perpetual contracts climbed to roughly 0.54, meaning buy and sell volumes are nearly equal but with a slight tilt toward higher overall trading. Meanwhile, XRP’s Z-Score — a measure of how far current trading activity deviates from the average — rose to nearly 0.95, approaching one standard deviation above normal. The Z-Score had spent an extended stretch in negative territory before turning positive, suggesting that some traders are starting to take on more risk again.
What’s next
The question is whether this time the historical pattern holds. Regulatory clarity and an ETF could draw institutional money that wasn’t around in 2020 — or the broader macro environment could keep XRP stuck in its range. For now, the data says retail is bleeding, but the perpetual market is stirring. That tension is exactly the kind of setup that has caught traders off guard before.
