Why XRP’s Q3 rally isn’t repeating – Reading investor psychology in Q4

Key Takeaways

Why is XRP struggling despite Ripple’s institutional growth?

Momentum between Ripple and XRP is decoupling, with investors selling into weakness, showing the rally is more psychological than structural.

Can the altcoin repeat its Q3 rally?

Q4 shows a clear psychological divergence, with realized losses surging and profit-taking accelerating, making a repeat rally a tough setup.

Ripple [XRP] is showing some clear divergences this cycle.

On the macro side, XRP is decoupling from Ripple’s growing institutional footprint. Even with that expansion, the altcoin was down 20% this quarter.

So the real split here is Ripple’s momentum versus XRP’s market structure.

Meanwhile, that gap is showing up in investor behavior, with traders selling into weakness. So does that make XRP’s Q4 rally more psychological than structural, making a repeat of a Q3-style run a harder setup to expect?

Cost basis maps XRP’s Q3 investor psychology

Q3 marked XRP’s strongest bullish phase of 2025.

The altcoin logged a 27% quarterly rally, tagging the $3.60 peak. That move also ranked as XRP’s most aggressive expansion since the Q4 2024 breakout, when a 240% surge finally pushed it out of its multi-year slump.

From a psychology standpoint, Q3 is where investors really reloaded. 

According to AMBCrypto, after XRP printed a clean impulse on top of a triple-digit run, traders started pricing in continuation. And when you look at the Aggregate Cost Basis, that expectation lines up with the structure.

Source: Glassnode

A clean yellow band showed a 1 billion XRP supply stacked at the $3.30 level.

Meanwhile, the darker red band between $2.80- $2.82 flagged a hefty 2.5 billion in Cost Basis Density, the largest cluster on the map. That zone captures the heavy accumulation that came in during XRP’s 27% Q3 rally.

So this reinforces AMBCrypto’s read that investors were positioned for bullish continuation.

But in Q4, XRP has printed a clear psychological divergence, showing why expecting a repeat of Q3 is still too far-fetched.

Ripple’s Q3 conviction meets Q4 reality check

As mentioned earlier, Ripple and XRP momentum aren’t moving in tandem.

This showed up cleanly in Glassnode’s data, which flagged another key divergence this cycle. In Q3, XRP’s push to the $3.60 peak came with a sharp spike in profit realization, hitting roughly $550 million per day.

Typically, that’s a bullish sign, with traders taking profit while keeping upside flow intact. But into Q4, profit realization spiked 240%, jumping from $65 million to $220 million/day even as XRP fell from $3.09 to $2.30.

Source: Glassnode

Simply put, traders are distributing into price weakness.

From a psychological angle, that uptick in selling puts extra supply into the market right as a large group of HODLers sits deep underwater, with Realized Losses surging past $470 million as XRP cracked $2.50.

In conclusion, XRP’s Q4 is showing clear psychological stress. 

Realized/Unrealized Losses are stacking up, profit-taking is accelerating, and Ripple’s institutional growth isn’t flowing into price. Taken together, these divergences make a $3+ rally a tough setup.