XRP ETF complex: XRPI, XRPR and Bitwise XRP after nine weeks of inflows
The XRP ETF sleeve has become one of the few consistent accumulation pockets in crypto at the start of 2026. While XRP-USD trades near $2.04–$2.07 and sits almost 20% below mid-November levels, U.S.-listed XRP spot ETFs have delivered nine straight weeks of inflows, cumulative subscriptions around $1.22B and total net assets close to $1.47B. At the same time, early-2026 flows show about $750M leaving Bitcoin and Ether ETFs in a single week, while XRP products attracted roughly $38M and printed record weekly turnover. The message is clear: institutional capital is rotating, not exiting, and a visible slice of that rotation is landing in XRPI, XRPR and the Bitwise XRP ETF.
Price snapshot: XRPI at $11.95, XRPR at $16.98, Bitwise XRP at $23.12
The Schwab-style yield narrative does not apply here – these are high-beta crypto trackers – but the price location versus the 52-week range matters for risk/reward.
XRPI (NASDAQ:XRPI) closed around $11.95, down 0.91% on the day after a $0.11 drop. Intraday it traded between $11.88 and $12.20, against a 52-week band of $10.44–$23.53 and average daily volume of about 530.4K shares. At $11.95, XRPI sits roughly 14.5% above its 52-week low but still around 49% below its 52-week high, which tells you how brutal the previous drawdown was and how much upside remains if sentiment turns.
XRPR (BATS:XRPR), the REX Osprey XRP ETF, changes hands near $16.98, off 1.16% on the session after a $0.20 decline. The day’s range runs from $16.85 to $17.26, versus a 52-week corridor of $14.79–$25.99 and thin average volume of just 19.5K shares. That puts XRPR roughly 14.8% above its low and about 34–35% below its high, with far tighter liquidity than XRPI.
The Bitwise XRP ETF (NYSEARCA:XRP) trades around $23.12, down 0.94% on the day, within a $23.00–$23.60 session range and a $20.00–$26.90 52-week range on roughly 74K average volume. At current levels it sits about 15.6% above its low and only ~14% below its high, showing it has held up better than XRPI and XRPR through the same XRP spot correction.
Overlay those quotes with spot XRP-USD near $2.07 (up around 0.6% on the day) and you get a clean picture: the underlying token is consolidating just above key support while the ETF complex trades in the lower-to-middle part of its 52-week range, with Bitwise’s fund clearly the relative strength leader.
Flow regime: $750M out of BTC/ETH ETFs, $38M into XRP ETFs
The ETF tape in early 2026 is defined by rotation, not capitulation. In the first full week of 2026, U.S. Bitcoin and Ether ETFs together saw roughly $750M in net outflows. About $681M of that came out of Bitcoin funds and $68.6M from Ether products over just four trading days, including a single $486.1M withdrawal day on January 7 for BTC products. Even after that hit, Bitcoin ETFs still command around $116.9B in assets, or about 6.5% of Bitcoin’s total market value, so this is position trimming, not a structural exit.
In the same window, XRP spot ETFs pulled in about $38–38.1M, set record weekly trading volumes and have now logged nine consecutive weeks of inflows since launching in November. Cumulative net subscriptions stand near $1.22B, with ETF AUM around $1.47B despite XRP-USD being down almost 20% from mid-November. That’s a very different pattern from the two majors: while Bitcoin and Ether ETFs swing between strong inflow weeks and heavy redemption weeks, XRP products are showing slow, persistent accumulation.
Drill into daily flows and the signal is similar. XRP ETFs drew about $38M last week alone, with inflows on Friday close to $5M. The only blemish so far has been a single outflow day driven by one large redemption out of 21Shares’ TOXR, which was more than offset by steady buying in XRPI, XRPR and Bitwise’s fund over the rest of the week. Markets are effectively telling you that some investors are redeploying risk from BTC and ETH into a more concentrated bet on XRP-USD via these new vehicles.
XRP-USD structure: ETF inflows vs weak spot and derivatives
The core tension in the XRP story right now is simple: ETF demand is firm, price is not. XRP trades around $2.04–$2.07, below all the key moving averages on the daily chart. Price sits under the 50-day EMA at $2.07, the 100-day EMA at $2.21 and the 200-day EMA at $2.32. The RSI is near 51 and falling, signalling momentum that is bleeding from bullish to neutral-bearish. The MACD line is close to crossing below its signal line, with the positive histogram shrinking, another classic sign that upside drive is fading.
On the downside, $2.00 is the immediate line in the sand. A clean break and close below that level opens room toward the January 1 low at $1.81. On the upside, XRP needs to reclaim $2.07, then $2.21 and $2.32, and finally punch through a descending trendline from the $3.66 record high to rotate the structure back to a convincing uptrend. So far, every rally attempt toward the EMA cluster has stalled.
Derivatives confirm that speculative leverage is draining even as ETF money walks in. XRP futures open interest peaked around $4.55B last Tuesday and has since slid to an average near $4B, a clear sign that traders are taking risk off. Yet the OI-weighted funding rate has flipped from negative to slightly positive – from about -0.0018% to 0.0051% – which means traders who remain in the market are biased to the long side. Lower price, lower OI, positive funding: the classic mix where opportunistic dip buyers appear, but without enough size to overwhelm lingering supply.
The result is exactly what you see on the chart: XRP is trapped below resistance, ETF flows are supportive, but weak retail demand and shrinking derivatives interest are capping the upside. Until either spot demand or futures risk appetite inflects higher, the ETFs are mainly slowing the bleeding rather than triggering a full-blown trend reversal.
Why XRP ETFs keep attracting money while Bitcoin ETFs whipsaw
Look at flows across the whole crypto ETF complex and you see three things at once. First, Bitcoin spot ETFs are now large enough that their flows directly move the underlying. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs hold over 1.29M BTC, and even a modest percentage rotation can dump several thousand coins on the market in a day. A single session on January 12 saw a net 3,734 BTC outflow (roughly $339M), led by BlackRock’s IBIT with 2,791 BTC in redemptions. On-chain, wallets linked to IBIT pushed more than 3,400 BTC to Coinbase Prime in a series of 300-BTC tranches plus a 143-BTC transfer, effectively turning ETF redemptions into real sell-side pressure.
Second, flows are volatile even on the “good” days. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted about $697M on the second trading day of 2026 and over $1.1B across the first two days of the year, pushing total ETF assets back above $110B after late-2025 outflows. One week later those inflows were more than half-reversed by $729M of redemptions. Bitcoin ETFs have logged only two green weeks in the last six, which is why BTC-USD is stuck near $90,000–$92,000 and struggling to sustain breakouts.
Third, XRP ETFs sit in a different regime: smaller, but much more stable. With about $1.47B AUM they’re a fraction of Bitcoin’s ETF footprint, but they have nine consecutive inflow weeks and around $38M of fresh capital in the latest week while BTC and ETH funds lost $681M and $68.6M, respectively. Some of that money is clearly rotational – the same investors reallocating from mega-cap beta to altcoin beta – but the behaviour is less tactical and more “slow build” than what you see in IBIT or FBTC.
Add in the narrative that XRP remains a “regulation-cleared” large-cap after years of litigation noise while Bitcoin and Ether are still tangled in macro, politics and regulation headlines, and you get why some institutions are comfortable adding XRP exposure via XRPI, XRPR and Bitwise’s product even as they trim Bitcoin.
XRPI vs XRPR vs Bitwise XRP: structure, liquidity and positioning
From an ETF perspective, you are really choosing between three flavours of the same exposure: XRPI, XRPR and the Bitwise XRP ETF. The differentiators are liquidity, position in the range and how fast each will move if flows accelerate or reverse.
XRPI with its roughly 530K average daily volume and tight $11.88–$12.20 intraday range is the liquidity anchor. It trades about 14.5% above its $10.44 low and almost 50% below its $23.53 high. That deep discount to the top of the range means that if XRP-USD regains the $2.32–$2.50 zone and ETF inflows keep compounding, XRPI has substantial upside optionality before you even approach prior extremes. At the same time, the 52-week low is not far – a ~14% drop from here – so anyone buying today is explicitly accepting double-digit downside risk back into the lower band if spot XRP cracks $2.00.
XRPR is far less liquid at 19.5K average shares per day, with a $16.85–$17.26 intraday band and a $14.79–$25.99 52-week corridor. It sits about 14.8% above its low and roughly 35% below its high. In practice, that combination – thinner volume, tighter discount to the high – means XRPR will likely behave more like a levered beta instrument: wider bid-ask spreads, larger percentage moves on modest orders and more sensitivity to one-off flows, particularly from institutional accounts that want to trade the REX Osprey brand.
The Bitwise XRP ETF occupies a middle ground: 74K average volume, $23.00–$23.60 intraday, $20.00–$26.90 52-week band, about 15.6% above its low and only ~14% below its high. Bitwise’s product has clearly held up best, reflecting both its investor base and its brand positioning as a more “institutional-style” crypto shop. For a portfolio that wants clean XRP beta with less drawdown than XRPI/XRPR have already suffered, this is the relatively defensive choice inside a very offensive asset class.
For all three tickers, “insider” behaviour is best read through ETF flow and creation/redemption activity, not corporate management moves. Watching daily and weekly flow sheets – and, where available, on-chain wallet movements that map ETF custody to exchange deposits – is the functional equivalent of monitoring insider transactions in a listed stock. When creations accelerate across XRPI, XRPR and Bitwise’s fund while XRP-USD still trades below all major EMAs, you are effectively seeing smart money average into weakness.
Risk matrix: what can break XRP ETFs up or down from here
On the upside, the bull case for XRP ETFs rests on four concrete pillars. First, ETF flows are still young relative to Bitcoin: $1.22B cumulative inflows and $1.47B in AUM leave plenty of room for scale. Even a doubling of assets would still leave XRP ETFs as a small slice of the overall crypto ETF market, but a doubling from here would likely require another $1–1.5B of net buying, which would materially tighten the link between ETF demand and spot XRP price.
Second, spot supply is not exploding. XRP has already absorbed a ~20% drawdown since mid-November while ETF money walked in and futures OI drifted from $4.55B to $4B. That is a controlled deleveraging, not a liquidation cascade. If XRP can hold $2.00, stabilize the RSI above 50 and push back above the $2.07 / $2.21 / $2.32 EMA stack, ETF flows can quickly flip from “cushioning the downside” to “driving the breakout”.
Third, rotation from BTC and ETH is already underway. A weekly $681M outflow from Bitcoin ETFs and $68.6M from Ether products, combined with $38M into XRP and over $41M into Solana ETFs, shows institutions are selectively reallocating along the risk curve. If BTC-USD continues to struggle around $90K–$92K with choppy ETF flows, while XRP and Solana keep posting clean, persistent inflow streaks, more multi-asset managers will feel pressure to underweight Bitcoin beta and pick up alternative large-cap exposure. XRP, with liquid spot markets and three competing U.S. ETFs, is a natural beneficiary.
Fourth, yield-hungry investors are gradually recognising that crypto’s “income” leg doesn’t just run through staking. XRP ETFs don’t pay staking yield, but they offer a way to express conviction on ETF flow and regulatory clarity inside brokerage and retirement accounts that can’t easily hold direct tokens. That structural access advantage doesn’t disappear with short-term price weakness.
On the downside, the bear case is also straightforward. A decisive break of $2.00 on XRP-USD with follow-through toward $1.81 would push all three ETFs back toward the lower edge of their 52-week ranges, likely dragging XRPI toward $11 and XRPR back toward the mid-$15s. A renewed spike lower in derivatives open interest alongside a reversal of funding into negative territory would indicate that even opportunistic dip-buyers are stepping away, leaving ETFs as the only net demand source. If that happened at the same time as Bitcoin ETFs swung back to strong inflows – the mirror image of the $697M inflow pattern they showed at the very start of the year – XRP’s relative bid could weaken fast.
Liquidity is the second key risk. XRPR, with sub-20K average volume, can gap several percentage points on modest institutional orders. That is attractive if you are on the right side of the flow, but brutal if you are not. XRPI’s 530K and Bitwise’s 74K volumes are more manageable, yet both are still tiny next to the multi-million-share prints in large equity ETFs. As a result, sizing must reflect the reality that these are high-volatility vehicles tied to a token already down ~20% in two months.
Finally, a shift in the regulatory or macro backdrop that favours Bitcoin specifically – for example, another wave of aggressive buying into IBIT and FBTC on the back of renewed “digital gold” narratives while XRP remains stuck below its EMAs – would immediately re-price the relative trade. The ETF flow data so far shows a rotation away from BTC/ETH into XRP and Solana, not an irreversible secular trend. If that rotation reverses, XRP ETF performance will lag.
Verdict: XRPI and Bitwise XRP are a Buy, XRPR a higher-beta Hold
Putting the numbers together, the XRP ETF complex sits in a favourable but still fragile spot. You have nine weeks of uninterrupted inflows, about $1.22B of cumulative demand, around $1.47B in AUM, and a latest week that saw $38M of fresh capital while Bitcoin and Ether ETFs together lost about $750M. Underlying XRP-USD is holding just above $2.00, below all major EMAs but with derivatives leverage reduced from $4.55B to around $4B and funding marginally positive. ETF prices trade 14–16% above their 52-week lows and, in the case of XRPI, almost 50% below the high, which means upside convexity is materially larger than immediate downside to the prior floor.
On that basis, my stance is clear and data-driven.
XRPI (NASDAQ:XRPI) – Buy. Liquidity is adequate, the fund trades close enough to the bottom of its 52-week range to offer asymmetry, and persistent inflows plus a deep discount to the prior high justify taking risk with a multi-month horizon.
Bitwise XRP ETF (NYSEARCA:XRP) – Buy. Strength relative to its own 52-week band, a more institutional investor base and cleaner behaviour in drawdowns make this the core position choice for portfolios that want XRP ETF exposure without leaning too hard into volatility.
XRPR (BATS:XRPR) – Hold (high-beta satellite). The combination of low volume and a narrower discount to the 52-week high creates a more speculative profile. XRPR can outperform sharply if flows into the REX vehicle accelerate, but it also carries outsized gap risk. It fits as a satellite position for traders already holding XRPI or Bitwise’s ETF, not as the primary exposure.
Net-net, the XRP ETF complex is a Buy with volatility, with the caveat that the entire thesis hinges on XRP-USD defending $2.00 and ETF inflows staying positive while Bitcoin and Ether ETFs continue to chop.
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