After completing the identification of a batch of Coinbase related addresses, the associated balance of Coinbase on the XRP holding list surged, which once sparked market speculation about a "large-scale increase in holdings." However, this change was not due to new inflows onto the chain or institutional buying, but rather a statistical adjustment resulting from the update of address labels.
146 addresses have been reclassified
According to the instructions of XRPScan, 146 previously unmarked Coinbase wallets have been identified this time. As these addresses are incorporated under Coinbase, the XRP balances that were previously classified as "unknown addresses" have been re-counted into the total of Coinbase.
After the automatic update, the market saw a temporary increase in the balance associated with Coinbase by approximately 5.57 billion XRP, representing a growth of nearly 4870%. However, at the same time, the balances in unidentified addresses almost simultaneously decreased, which indicates that this was more of a reclassification rather than a new on-chain transfer.
After the update, the addresses related to Coinbase hold a total of approximately 5.68 billion XRP, distributed across 152 accounts, rising to third place among the identified entities.
A rising rank does not equate to own purchases.
The most misleading aspect of this data change is that "associated balance" is not equal to "platform-owned assets." The wealth ranking statistics refer to the balances on identified addresses, reflecting the scale of assets controlled or held by these addresses, but they do not directly prove the ultimate economic ownership of those assets.
XRPScan also clearly indicates that large-scale addresses on exchanges usually contain funds centrally managed by users. Therefore, the rise in Coinbase's ranking this time should be understood as its XRP custody scale being further recognized, rather than Coinbase having acquired 5.68 billion XRP on its own.
This distinction is particularly important for interpreting on-chain data. If one only looks at changes in address balances, the market may easily misinterpret them as institutional buying, exchanges accumulating funds, or large amounts of capital entering the market.
cbXRP reserves only a portion of it.
For comparison, Coinbase publicly discloses that its cbXRP reserves are currently around 123.96 million XRP, which corresponds to almost an equal amount of encapsulated assets on the Base chain. This figure only represents a small portion of the total balance of its associated wallets, and it also indicates that the assets belonging to addresses related to Coinbase have different actual uses.
While the explanation for XRPScan is being completed, the price of XRP continues to rise. According to Coinbase data, XRP was trading at $1.43 at that time, with a 2.7% increase over 24 hours and a gain of over 7% in the past 7 days.
This means that, although the signal of a "huge inflow" was later confirmed to be merely a change in statistical methodology, market prices did not immediately reverse their upward trend as a result.
