The crypto markets may look calm on the surface, but this weekend saw three major shocks: XRP had just 1.16% of its entire market cap locked inside ETFs, a SHIB mega-whale pulled nearly 2 trillion tokens straight off Coinbase Prime, and Vitalik Buterin casually posted what could be the blueprint for the next stablecoin revolution.
TL;DR
- XRP ETF net assets hit $1.47 billion and now make up 1.16% of the total market cap.
- One Shiba Inu (SHIB) address is worth 1.92 trillion tokens on Coinbase.
- Vitalik Buterin shares his three-step plan to fix stablecoins.
XRP ETFs now control over 1.16% of market
XRP just hit a pretty surprising milestone, with $1.47 billion now sitting locked inside U.S.-based spot ETFs, as per SoSoValue. That is not just a nice round number — it is 1.16% of XRP’s full market cap, wrapped up in regulated wrappers and taken off the playing field.
That does not mean the tokens are gone or burned. These XRP are parked, passive and — at least for now — off-limits to daily price action.
ETF flows like this tend to fly under the radar — until they don’t. That $1.47 billion is money that has been slowly but surely changing the market’s dynamics for XRP. If people keep buying into the ETF, it will create a “price magnet” around the net asset zone, which right now is about the $2.00-$2.10 XRP range.
Source: SoSoValueIf inflows go past $1.6 billion in Q1, expect XRP to start acting more like an ETF-backed commodity and less like a retail-driven altcoin. This means more muted reactions to news, more compression around the $2.30 zone and potentially fewer shakeouts.
Weekly flows show that the momentum has slowed down since the flood of late 2025. After a $243 million week in mid-November, this past week only added $38 million. But the direction has not changed, it has just slowed down. That is the most important thing.
This kind of profile might explain why XRP volatility has been dampened lately. The same buyers who were once fueling wicks are now holding wrapped exposure through XRPC (Canary), XRPZ (Franklin) and others. And they are not selling the dip — they are not even touching the chart.
Unknown Shiba Inu whale pulls 1.9 trillion tokens from Coinbase
One wallet is eating Shiba Inu coins like it is on a discount. Address 0xb57a394 pulled in 1,923,043,775,311 SHIB over the past two weeks — yes, that’s trillion with a T. All of it came straight from Coinbase Prime.
Arkham has had at least 15 transfers since late December. Some were massive — 214 billion at a time. Others were small scoops, like 5.9 billion SHIB. What’s the total value? It is just over $16 million so far, and it is all still sitting at that address.
Just a guess: This is not some meme trader trying to pull a fast move. It looks like treasury positioning. It could be for a project using Shibarium or for some ecosystem play that has not been revealed yet.
In the meantime, the price of the Shiba Inu coin is stuck right under $0.000009, trying to hold the line. It briefly spiked up to $0.00000950 last week, but then lost steam. It is currently at around $0.00000867 on Binance.
Source: ArkhamIf that $0.000009 flips into support, bulls will probably go for $0.00001102 next. If it fails again, then $0.00000699 is the line in the sand. For now, this whale’s steady buying is the most optimistic thing SHIB has going for it.
What’s interesting is that this wallet is not just reacting to the price — it is leading the charge. The accumulation started before the breakout attempt. That suggests it was not chasing momentum. It was loading ahead of something.
This is the kind of behavior you would expect before a staking launch, L2 incentive unlock or liquidity pool announcement. If SHIB gets any utility catalyst this month, this wallet will be the canary that called it early.
Vitalik Buterin thinks most stablecoins are built wrong, but he has solution
Vitalik Buterin dropped a casual post this weekend, but it reads like a big-picture manifesto. To sum it up, decentralized stablecoins are not quite up to par. And it is not just about the tech — it is about design flaws that no one is fixing.
Here is what the Ethereum creator laid out:
- Stop pegging everything to the dollar. Use an index that makes more sense for crypto.
- Make oracles truly decentralized and hard to manipulate — no backdoors for whales.
- Fix the yield problem. If staking rewards compete with your stablecoin’s stability, your system is already broken.
That third point hits hardest right now. In most stablecoin systems, capital gets split — some gets locked into the stablecoin’s mechanism, but a growing portion chases higher yield elsewhere. This makes the peg’s collateral base weaker and forces projects to offer higher rewards just to stay competitive.
Buterin’s take: Competition for yield is killing decentralization. You cannot offer 20% APY and expect stable behavior. He did not mention any names, but it is pretty clear he is talking about protocols like Frax, Liquity and maybe even MakerDAO with their DAI.
Basically, Buterin is pushing for a more neutral way of measuring things that can be used in the ecosystem. Something that is not tied to Fed interest rates or USD credibility.
Do not expect a new coin from Vitalik Buterin, but do expect a wave of discussion. If one of the major Ethereum builders takes this thread seriously, it could trigger a new design cycle — likely on L2s where experimentation is faster.
If any new “index-stable” shows up in Q1, especially with Oracle innovation, it will probably be linked to this post.
What to watch in crypto heading into the week
The crypto market is not too exciting right now, but things are changing behind the scenes. Wrapped XRP is not going back into circulation anytime soon. There is a trillion SHIB sitting in one place. Ethereum might be the quiet force behind a new wave of stablecoins — this time built with more brains than branding.
Key levels to keep an eye on:
Shiba Inu (SHIB): $0.000009 is the level to flip. Keep an eye on $0.00001102 above and $0.00000699 below.
XRP: The ETF zone support is holding stable at around $2-$2.1. The mid-band is currently at $1.89.
Ethereum: No changes yet at above $3,000, but any dev team teasing an “index-stable” is probably taking notes from Vitalik Buterin’s thread.
Source: https://u.today/morning-crypto-report-116-of-xrp-market-cap-disappears-in-etfs-new-shiba-inu-trillionaire-absorbs
